Oral Answers to Questions

HEALTH

The Secretary of State was asked—

Hospital Travel Costs

Ben Chapman: What assistance is available for cancer patients to help with travel costs to and from hospital.

Andy Burnham: The hospital travel costs scheme provides financial assistance to NHS patients, including cancer patients, who do not have a medical need for ambulance transport but who require assistance in meeting the costs of travel to and from care.

Ben Chapman: Does my hon. Friend accept that cancer patients, at a sensitive time in their lives, must travel to hospital an average of 50 times in the course of their no doubt excellent treatment, at places such as Clatterbridge centre for oncology? In doing so, they incur costs of hundreds of pounds in travel and in the lottery of car parking charges. Will the Department move forward with consulting on better awareness of the hospital travel costs scheme and increasing its uptake?

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point; he has a distinguished cancer treatment centre in his constituency. As a fellow north-west MP, I know that my constituents must travel some considerable distance to Christie's, while others in the Merseyside region travel to his constituency. I therefore accept that people can face extra financial worries at a time of stress and anxiety due to their illness. First, further work is needed to ensure that the scheme's scope is not too rigid and focused on hospital settings as opposed to primary care, where more could be done. Secondly, and more importantly, we need to get better information to people who may be eligible to benefit from the scheme. Many patients may be able to get significant support for their travel costs.

Steve Webb: The Minister will be aware that the cumulative cost of car parking, not just for cancer patients but for other regular visitors to hospital, can be substantial. At this point, the normal ministerial reply is that that is a local issue—but is the Department of Health at all responsible? Does it feel that it has any national role at all in the health service, or will it just allow local trusts to charge what they like?

Andy Burnham: Normally, Liberal Democrats are the first to jump up and cry foul about micro-management and targets coming from the centre. Again, dare I say, they want to have it both ways. As far as I am concerned, car parking is a big issue for the public— [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman will hear me out, I shall go on to say that it is perhaps a bigger issue for the public than the managers of some NHS trusts accept. In a world in which patients have more choice, many of them will make an important point of this issue, and many trusts will be required to think harder about it. Essentially, however, it is a local decision depending on the availability of space on trust land and the proximity of the trust to the town centre.

Kevin Barron: I do not expect my hon. Friend to comment yet on the publication this morning of the Health Committee's report on NHS charges. However, we are deeply concerned about patients' knowledge of the hospital travel costs scheme. Can he ensure that that is improved? Can he also consider setting national guidelines for hospital car park charges, especially for patients, as the situation is a bit of a mess at the moment?

Andy Burnham: I woke up this morning to reports of the findings of my right hon. Friend's Committee, and I detected his forthright Yorkshire tones in some of the language used to describe the situation. He is right to say that more effort needs to be made to ensure that patients, particularly those on low incomes, are given access to information about their eligibility to claim for their transport costs, either in whole or in part. How people receive that money back from hospital trusts, whether after or before their treatment, is also an issue. My right hon. Friend is also right to say that car parking is a big issue for patients. Many trusts are making exceptions for car parking, particularly for cancer patients. Others that are not doing that should look at those who are, and see whether they can provide better support to patients at a difficult time in their lives.

Anne Main: According to the 19th report of the Public Accounts Committee, more than three quarters of NHS patients were not given information on financial benefits that could be used, for example, to help to pay their car parking fees. As it was stated in evidence to the Committee that progress was hoped for by the end of 2005 on delivery of disability living allowance and attendance allowance to cancer patients, what progress has been made?

Andy Burnham: The health White Paper published earlier this year made a specific commitment to consult on the hospital travel costs scheme: first, on whether the scope needs to be increased so that patients not under the care of a consultant but another health service practitioner can benefit; and secondly, working with Macmillan, which has done excellent work in this area, on exactly how patients are given information about whether they are eligible to benefit. It is not as easy as sticking a poster up on a wall; we must see how we can get relevant information to patients who may be able to benefit. That is a fair and legitimate point, and we will take that forward in consultation this autumn.

Abortion

Jim Cunningham: What recent discussions she has had with representatives of the Roman Catholic Church on Government policy on abortion.

Patricia Hewitt: When I met Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor and his colleagues recently, we discussed several issues, including whether the 24-week time limit on abortion should be reduced. The Government have no plans to change the law on abortion.

Jim Cunningham: Has my right hon. Friend had consultations with any other parties, such as members of the medical profession?

Patricia Hewitt: Members of the medical profession, particularly the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Medical Association, have recently made clear that they do not believe the evidence supports any need to change the time limits specified in the present law on abortion.

Richard Ottaway: Does the Secretary of State accept that if a decision is to be made, it must be made on the basis of the best advice and evidence available to Members? Will she seriously consider Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor's suggestion that a Joint Committee of the two Houses be set up to hear the evidence so that a rational and sensible decision can be made?

Patricia Hewitt: That is, of course, a matter for individual Select Committees and for the House, not for the Government. However, I stress that when the law was revised in the late 1980s, the medical profession believed that the age at which a foetus was considered viable should be reduced from 28 weeks' gestation to 24. There was a clear medical consensus on that, based on evidence. There is no such consensus or similar evidence today.

Chris McCafferty: Does my right hon. Friend agree that safe and legal abortion is crucial to the mental and physical well-being of women in this country, given that no contraceptive method is 100 per cent. safe? Does she acknowledge that fewer than 0.1 per cent. of late terminations take place at 24 weeks, and that the reason for those terminations is usually concern for the health and welfare of the mother and child or the death or divorce of a partner in marriage?

Patricia Hewitt: I agree with my hon. Friend. Many Members on both sides of the House fought to ensure that the law would allow women to choose a safe and legal abortion should they need to do so. Speaking for myself, I believe that that is right, and that it would be a tragedy for many women if it were reversed. My hon. Friend is also right about late abortions: according to the most recent figures that we have, 137 abortions in the last year took place at 24 weeks' gestation or above.

Sandra Gidley: I am sure the Secretary of State agrees that improved education and access to contraception would help to reduce the abortion rate. Why are many primary care trusts cutting the number of community clinics as part of their strategy to reduce deficits? Will the Secretary of State ensure that clinics do not close, so that a vital service remains available and doctors and nurses can retain their skills?

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Lady is absolutely right: of course it is better for women not to find themselves with unwanted pregnancies. That is why we have substantially increased investment not just in contraception services but in targeted measures to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies. I know the hon. Lady will welcome the fact that the number of pregnancies among those under 18 has been falling, and is now at its lowest since the mid-1980s. However, as was recently announced by the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), primary care trusts are considering how to redesign their sexual health services, including contraception services, to ensure that they are as effective and available as possible.

Audiology

Helen Goodman: What the current average waiting time is for a hearing aid within the NHS.

Desmond Swayne: What targets she has set for audiology waiting times.

Vincent Cable: If she will make a statement on audiology services in the NHS.

Lorely Burt: When her Department expects to take steps to reduce waiting times for audiology services.

Ivan Lewis: The Department does not collect waiting times for hearing aid fittings. We aim to deliver audiology diagnostic tests within 13 weeks by March 2007, and within six weeks by December 2008.

Helen Goodman: I am sure that the Minister has spoken to many people who now have digital hearing aids, who will have told him how tremendously their quality of life and that of their families has improved. Why are hearing aids not subject to the waiting time targets that apply to other health care provision?

Ivan Lewis: We want to maintain a situation in which most patients are referred directly by GPs to audiology departments, not consultants, and we do not want to create a position that would distort that practice. However, there are genuine challenges and problems with waiting times in certain parts of the country, which is why the Department will be working with stakeholders such as the Royal National Institute for Deaf People to produce an action plan to improve waiting times across the country, rather than have the unacceptable standards that apply in some parts of the country.

Desmond Swayne: This happens all the time. One tables a perfectly straightforward question, and the Minister answers another. Is not the answer to my question, as it appears on the Order Paper, "None"?

Ivan Lewis: May I suggest that if the hon. Gentleman forwarded his questions by e-mail he might get a more satisfactory response? He should note that the £125 million invested in the programme for modernising hearing aid services has been warmly welcomed by people who have benefited tremendously from digital hearing aids, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said. I also have to say that Conservative Members did not vote for that £125 million expenditure on the modernisation programme.

Vincent Cable: Does the Minister acknowledge that, in addition to the long waiting lists for fitting—more than a year in my primary care trust area—and additional waits for diagnostic tests, there is a large legacy problem of analogue hearing aids that need to be replaced by digital aids in the course of time? What would be a realistic time frame for clearing the large backlog of commitments, which in so many cases are long awaited?

Ivan Lewis: I entirely agree that that issue must be taken seriously. It must form an inherent part of the action plan that we take forward, which will include a number of issues as well as that one. Other issues are increasing demand, inadequate capacity, work force skills and competencies, and the fact that we do not yet have sufficient focus on modern technology. Our action plan will address the remaining obstacles and ensure that people all over the country have access to the quality treatment that they deserve.

Lorely Burt: In my constituency, residents are waiting 15 months after their tests before they receive their hearing aids. Given that there is an 18-week target, that is clearly unacceptable. I wonder whether it would be possible to seek a reciprocal agreement with European countries. I am told that in Denmark hearing aids are cheaper and arrive more quickly. Some people are going over there to get their hearing aids, to avoid the waiting lists here. In Luxembourg, too, it is possible to—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the Minister has already got the point that it is better abroad.

Ivan Lewis: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At one point I thought that we were having a discussion on the Eurovision song contest—[Hon. Members: "No!"]—not that anyone in the House is going to admit to watching that. The hon. Lady raises a serious issue, and if, as we develop the action plan, I can learn from international best practice, particularly where there are successes and achievements of better waiting times, I shall attempt to do so and incorporate it into this country's approach to the problem.

David Taylor: Like me, 10 per cent. of British adults—5 million people—suffer from chronic tinnitus, and 1 per cent.—500,000 people—suffer so badly that it impacts severely on their quality of life. Will the Minister confirm whether audiology services for tinnitus, which are not necessarily linked with digital hearing aids, but often provide advice about therapeutic treatment to tackle the problem, are adequately catered for by the NHS? Many advances have been made in other areas of audiology, but this remains somewhat of a Cinderella service.

Ivan Lewis: I would be delighted to give my hon. Friend an assurance that part of the action plan will be to look into the problem of tinnitus. I know that it can be a horrendous condition that adversely affects people's quality of life and undermines their daily functioning. We should take it extremely seriously, and I confirm my commitment to my hon. Friend that as part of our action plan, we will look specifically into the advice and support that tinnitus sufferers receive.

Angela Watkinson: What advice can the Minister give to my constituent, Mr. Sapsford, who has been waiting for five months for an audiology test? He has been told that he is not a priority because he is not over 90 years old, he is not receiving a war pension and he is not blind. My local trust cannot cope with the level of demand with the current level of staff. If the Secretary of State would consider allowing our trust to recover its budget deficit over the next two or three years, instead of in the current year, it might not have to make those cuts in essential services to patients.

Ivan Lewis: During my responses today, I have frankly acknowledged the difficulties and challenges in certain parts of the country, including the hon. Lady's constituency, but I hope that she will be equally honest with her constituents and tell them that time and again when we have debated the amount of resources that we should invest in the NHS, the party that she represents in this House has voted against that investment—so the situation could be considerably worse.

Angus Robertson: This is an important issue for people throughout the UK. What is the Minister doing to establish best practice between the UK Government and devolved Administrations? Does he agree that it is strange to hear oppositionist tones from the Liberal Democrats on this subject when in Scotland, they are in government?

Ivan Lewis: Frankly, I am not surprised to hear that the Liberal Democrats are saying one thing in Scotland and something entirely different in England. In my experience in my constituency, they say one thing in one ward and something else in a neighbouring ward.

John Baron: The Minister's admission that there are difficulties in this area is to be welcomed, because many—including the 33,000 patients who have to wait longer than a year for an audiology test—would otherwise have considered his written statement today on audiology services complacent. Does he accept that the Government's decision to exclude direct referrals from the 18-week time target, while including referrals made through ear, nose and throat consultants, raises the spectre of a two-tier NHS, in which the articulate and better-off will be able to ask to be referred through an ENT consultant in order to receive a hearing aid within 18 weeks, while those who do not know how the system works will have to wait far longer for their hearing aid? Does the Minister believe that that represents equitable access for all, including the 56 per cent. of patients in his local strategic health authority who have to wait longer than 26 weeks?

Ivan Lewis: The whole purpose of the action plan is to ensure that we have equitable access and that the best practice in some areas—for example, the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, my local trust, which has zero waiting time for such services—is replicated all over the country. We need to ensure that we do not have a two-tier system. However, including direct referrals in the 18-week target would have led to a perverse incentive that we do not want to encourage. We want to continue the situation in which the vast majority of people go directly from their GP to audiology departments. Anyway, we want to see more such treatment provided in the community rather than in hospital in the future. Acknowledging the existence of challenges and issues and committing ourselves to producing an action plan is a responsible way to tackle that serious issue.

Overseas Nurses

Shailesh Vara: What her policy is on the recruitment of nurses from overseas; and if she will make a statement.

Patricia Hewitt: The NHS has a long history of welcoming nurses from overseas. We have also increased the number of nurses that we train in Britain by more than 60 per cent. since 1997. Those nurses should, of course, have the opportunity to progress in their careers. The Government recently changed the work permit arrangements so that in future, junior nurses from overseas can be appointed only if there is no suitable candidate from the UK or the rest of Europe.

Shailesh Vara: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that response. Given that many nurses are approaching retirement age, what assurance can the Secretary of State give that British-trained nurses alone will be able to replace them?

Patricia Hewitt: Vacancies are at their lowest level ever, and we are employing more than 85,000 more nurses than we were in 1997. That substantial increase has meant that newly qualified nurses have found it difficult to get jobs. The advantage of the managed migration policy is that where shortages arise—and there are shortages in specialist jobs in the NHS—they can be included in the shortage category so that employers can obtain work permits for nurses from abroad without having to show that there is no suitable domestic candidate. That is a flexible system that can respond to changes in our own labour market. Given the present situation of newly qualified staff, it is clearly right that we should take junior nursing jobs out of the shortage category.

Jim Devine: I welcome the initiative by my right hon. Friend. Does she agree that there is no such thing as an ethical recruitment strategy from overseas, from developing countries? Countries simply recruited from underdeveloped countries to fill the gap, and they lost out in the end.

Patricia Hewitt: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for supporting the action that we have taken, but I do not agree about whether it is possible to have an ethical recruitment policy. On that particular issue, we have led the way—not only by making it very clear that the NHS itself and staffing agencies that work for the NHS are not allowed to recruit directly from developing countries that desperately need their own staff, but by entering into agreements with countries such as the Philippines or India whereby they train more nurses than they can possibly employ, and—certainly before we made this change—by being willing to employ those staff here. I also refer my hon. Friend to the excellent work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and the investment that we are putting in—for instance in Malawi and other parts of Africa—to help countries to train the health care workers that they so desperately need to care for their own population.

Stephen Dorrell: Is not what the Secretary of State euphemistically refers to as managed migration a panic reaction by the Government to the sharp rises in the number of unemployed newly qualified nurses? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that those numbers do not go on rising, and that we are not ploughing resources into training nurses and offering them the prospect of work, but no jobs at the end of the training?

Patricia Hewitt: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right: as I said a moment ago, there are real difficulties this year for many newly qualified nurses and indeed others, including physiotherapists, in getting jobs. We have therefore been working with NHS employers, and the chief nursing officer at the Department recently issued guidelines that will make it much clearer that, for instance, the director of nursing within each trust should be working with colleagues right across the local health community—with other NHS organisations—to ensure that vacancies are created and filled wherever possible by newly qualified staff; that private agency temporary staff are reduced; and that in their place, where necessary, newly qualified staff are taken into NHS banks, where they can be offered part-time or full-time work in order to progress their training.
	There are a number of practical steps being taken in different parts of the country and we will go on ensuring that that happens in order to support our own newly qualified nurses. I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman supports or opposes the action that we sensibly took, as the problem became clear, to ensure that we do not continue to recruit junior nurses from outside the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. I think that that is the right step to take, and I would be interested to know whether he and his party support it.

Rosie Cooper: What dispensations are available to NHS employees who are identified for redundancy or have been made redundant, with regard to recruitment and employment in independent treatment centres in organisations such as Southport and Ormskirk hospital in my constituency?

Patricia Hewitt: There are still several thousand vacancies across the NHS, and we have already taken steps to ensure that wherever possible, vacancies are ring-fenced for staff who are facing redeployment or even redundancy in their current positions. There is already a policy, which goes back a couple of years, of ensuring that staff who have been made redundant from NHS employment can, despite the additionality rule, seek immediate employment in an independent sector treatment centre that is also working for NHS patients.

Nadine Dorries: A midwife who lives in my constituency and works at Bedford hospital arrived in this country seven years ago, trained as a nurse, became a midwife and has now been told, as part of the consultation process at Bedford hospital, that she is likely to lose her job. Nearby Lister hospital has made an announcement of 500 redundancies. My constituent has been told that her chance of securing another job as a midwife anywhere in the region is zero. Does the Secretary of State feel that my constituent, who is now applying for a job in Waitrose, has been let down by the Government, along with all the other nurses who came to this country seven years ago to train?

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Lady's constituent and many other staff are facing an extremely difficult situation at the moment, as are some of the newly qualified staff to whom I referred. I assume that her constituent has already secured settlement, as she has clearly been making a valuable contribution to the NHS here for the past seven years. However, the fact remains that every hospital that is in financial difficulties, or that simply wishes to make itself more effective, is doing everything possible to avoid compulsory redundancies. When those are unavoidable—as in some cases they are—hospitals are also putting in place every support possible to ensure that staff, who have sometimes given years of service to the NHS, are supported to get other jobs in the health service.

Andrew Lansley: Will the Secretary of State admit that we have gone from a period of expansion to one of contraction for the nursing work force? Some 5,500 extra nurses were recruited the year before last, but 5,500 nursing posts are now to be lost in our hospital sector. It is not just nurses leaving education who cannot find a job, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) made clear, nurses in employment are losing their jobs. In the context of overseas recruitment, will the Secretary of State admit that? Is that not the reason why the shortages criterion has been removed not just from junior nursing posts, but from the whole of bands 5 and 6, which means that most nursing posts are affected?

Patricia Hewitt: We have indeed removed bands 5 and 6, which cover the jobs for which newly qualified nurses apply, from the shortage applications. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman recognises the enormous increase in the staffing of the NHS. There are more than 200,000 additional staff and more than 85,000 extra nurses—and that was made possible by the additional investment that he and the rest of the Conservative party voted against.
	The hon. Gentleman talks specifically about nurses and other staff in hospitals. The reality is that as hospitals become more effective and the NHS takes advantage of changing medical practice—for example, by employing more nurses in the community and reducing the number of emergency admissions—there will need to be fewer acute beds and thus fewer staff in some of our hospitals. He really has to decide whether he believes that the NHS should use the best medical practice to give the best care to patients and get the best value from the increased investment that we have made, or whether, along with voting against the increased investment, he is also giving up on any pretence of using that investment to the best effect for patients.

Andrew Lansley: It is a complete fiction that more nursing posts in the community are being created. In the last year for which we have figures, there were 500 fewer district nurse posts and 800 fewer health visitor posts. If the Secretary of State knows what is going on, she must have based her policy on a new set of work force supply and demand figures. Two years ago, the Department of Health's work force projection said that we would be short of 40,000 nurses by the end of the decade, and that we would need to recruit 12,000 overseas nurses a year. What is the Secretary of State's current projection?

Patricia Hewitt: The work force projections that the Department of Health undertakes are all based on local projections of need developed by individual hospitals and other parts of the NHS. It is already clear that when the assessments of requirements for training places were made some years ago, several hospitals overestimated their requirements. A minority of hospitals were, even at that point, overspending their budgets at the expense of other parts of the NHS, yet also taking on new staff and commissioning new training places—and now they cannot find jobs for all the nurses who have been trained. That situation is extremely unsatisfactory and unfair to the staff involved.
	We still have not heard whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that we have done the right thing. The great advantage of the managed migration policy and the new system for shortage occupations is that when we see a problem emerging, as we did earlier this year, we can take action to ensure that newly qualified nurses from abroad do not continue to seek employment here. If the situation changes in future years, we can alter that. The fact is that we have substantially increased the number of training places, by over 60 per cent., so we have no shortage of nurses at the moment.

Hospital Cleanliness

Ian Austin: Pursuant to the answer of 20 June 2006,  Official Report, column 1792W, on hospital cleanliness (west midlands), what systems have been recently introduced to improve hospital cleanliness in the west midlands.

Andy Burnham: The former strategic health authorities which have been merged to form NHS West Midlands established their own steering groups. The membership of these groups was wide-ranging and their remits included hospital cleaning as well as infection control. Relevant action plans are now being taken forward as a result of the input from these groups.

Ian Austin: I thank the Minister for his answer, but will he come to Dudley again to visit our new £180 million hospital, where he can see for himself a revolutionary microfibre cleaning system that is helping to combat infections? I recently met Sue Macmillan, who showed me how the system reduces infection and improves cleanliness. We can never achieve 100 per cent. perfection, but is that not a great example of the way in which extra investment, together with new facilities and ways of working, has delivered improvements for patients?

Andy Burnham: I recently made an unannounced visit to Dudley, where I saw my hon. Friend's hospital for myself. It is, indeed, impressive, and the microfibre cleaning system used there is being evaluated by the Department to see whether or not it can make a broader contribution. Will he pass on my thanks to Sue and her team for the excellent job that they are doing? Cleaners across the NHS do a fantastic job but I am sure that, like me, the hon. Gentleman remembers the billboards at the last election that said, "How hard is it to clean a hospital?" It was a denigrating attack on the people who keep our hospitals clean, and I am sure that it was approved by the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). However, I am happy to pay tribute to Sue and her team, and I am sure that my hon. Friend would wish to pay tribute to many other cleaners across the NHS.

Mark Pritchard: May I put on record my thanks to both public and private sector cleaners? The trouble is, however, that often they are cleaning wards that are full of litter from the Government's bureaucracy and red tape. To be serious, is the Minister confident that MRSA, VRSA and ESBL superbugs have left the Princess Royal hospital in Shropshire? If he cannot tell the House that they have done so, why has the only isolation unit in Shropshire at the Princess Royal hospital been closed?

Andy Burnham: The latest figures for 2005 for west midlands hospital trusts rated more than 30 sites either good or excellent—none was unacceptable—for hospital cleanliness. There is therefore a good record in the hon. Gentleman's region. However, on the question of whether we are satisfied, no, we are not complacent about the issue. It is crucial that trusts, from the chief executive down, put hospital cleanliness and control of hospital-acquired infection at the top of their list of priorities, because patients expect to be treated in a clean and safe environment. I give the hon. Gentleman a categoric assurance that that is what trusts should do, but he should take pride in the trusts in his region and constituency, because they are doing a good job.

Assaults (Mental Health Wards)

James Brokenshire: What recent estimate she has made of the number of assaults on patients and health care staff within in-patient mental health wards.

Adam Afriyie: How many sexual assaults took place in in-patient mental health wards in 2005-06; and if she will make a statement.

Rosie Winterton: Data from the counter-fraud security management service show 43,097 incidents of physical assault against staff working in mental health and learning disability settings in 2004-05. A report published today by the National Patient Safety Agency—a copy has been placed in the Library and I have asked for further copies to be distributed to Opposition Members—shows 558 reports of physical abuse of patients, including 122 reports of incidents relating to sexual safety between November 2003 and September 2005.

James Brokenshire: I thank the Minister for her response and for providing me with a copy of the report a few hours ago, but it is remarkable that that was prompted by Health questions, rather than previous freedom of information requests from Mind, the charity. The NPSA report is detailed, and it deserves close examination, as it recognises the important work of health professionals. However, many people are concerned about the safety of patients and the need to protect them against assault in mental health units. The report shows that there were 562 cases of patient abuse by a third party in a mental health setting, and from my reading of the graph, there were a number of cases of severe harm and, indeed, death. Can the Minister confirm that, and say what steps are being taken to minimise the risk of people in need of urgent medical treatment suffering even more trauma as a result of the actions of third parties while they are in the care of the national health service?

Rosie Winterton: I certainly share the hon. Gentleman's concern about some of the issues raised in the report. We should bear in mind the fact that about 1 million people are treated in specialist mental health services every year, but of course we take many of those allegations very seriously. In the report, in collaboration with NPSA, the Department has looked at examples of best practice which implement the guidance set out by the Department to ensure high levels of patient safety. These matters are ongoing and we will continue to examine the issues raised by the report, so that if anything else needs to be done to ensure patient safety, we will do it.

Adam Afriyie: My concern is for those who are facing mental health challenges, who are perhaps the most vulnerable members of our society. In 1996 the Prime Minister made a clear commitment to the ending of mixed-sex wards. Ten years later, people have a right to know why patients are still suffering abuse at the hands of the Government—people who come to the national health service in their hour of need are found to have been abused. My question to the Minister is simple and can be answered yes or no. Will she now make the commitment to ending the use of mixed wards for mental health in-patients, and will she do it today?

Rosie Winterton: Let us be clear: 99 per cent. of mental in-patient wards meet the requirements that have been laid down by the Department. Those requirements are that there should be separate sleeping accommodation and separate toilets and bathrooms. We also recommend that trusts could consider whether it is appropriate for wards to be completely male-only or female-only. Those issues are often debated, and the hon. Gentleman should recognise that. In some circumstances it is right that there are areas where males and females can go. That, in a sense, makes it a normal setting. There are also those who prefer that in some instances there should be completely separate wards. We have told trusts that where it is appropriate, they should consider such matters. As I said, there is 99 per cent. compliance in mental in-patient wards. We are working with the remaining 1 per cent. to ensure 100 per cent. compliance.

Lynne Jones: I share the concerns about the delay in the publication of the report, which I understand was available last November, but I commend the Government for collecting the information. We already knew from a report from the Healthcare Commission last May about the high levels of violence in mental health and learning disability units, which it attributed to the high level of staff vacancies, the lack of experienced staff in in-patient units, the overcrowding and the lack of a therapeutic and structured care system in wards. That was last May. Have things got better since then, and if not, why not? Will the Minister take urgent action to address these very difficult issues?

Rosie Winterton: We are continually seeing improvements in mental health services, particularly with some of the community teams that have been set up so that there is less need for the in-patient care scenario. We have seen the development of those teams over the past five years, accompanied by massively increased investment—about £1.7 billion extra has gone into mental health services. I recently announced £140 million in capital investment to improve in-patient services for people with mental health problems.
	Taken together, all these things mean that services are improving. That is not to say that we do not take reports such as this extremely seriously, or that we are not doing everything that we can to ensure that the existing guidance accords patient safety the highest priority.

Ian Gibson: Will my hon. Friend confirm the percentage of female patients subjected to such assaults, if that is known? Does she think that we have been rather more robust in ensuring the safety of our hospital accident and emergency ward employees—we have taken up the cudgels in that regard—and could we not show the same verve and enthusiasm in respect of our patients?

Rosie Winterton: We have been very clear about the importance of patient safety, and particularly about making sure that there is proper protection for women. We have a follow-up strategy for some of the allegations made in the report, which is to look in more detail at some of the incidents that have taken place and to ensure that proper local investigations have been undertaken. We can then look at some of the details that my hon. Friend talks about.
	On accident and emergency departments, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), the Minister with responsibility for public health, issued a consultation recently that was particularly concerned with visitors to accident and emergency departments. However, it was decided not to issue the same kind of consultation regarding mental health patients, for obvious reasons.

Julian Lewis: Having had a Bill on this subject talked out by the Government as long ago as December 1997, may I ask the Minister what level of compensation—if any—the Government typically pay to a woman mental health in-patient after she has been raped in an in-patient unit as a result of the Government's broken promises to eliminate mixed-sex wards?

Rosie Winterton: Let me be absolutely clear: the rapes referred to in this report are allegations of rape, and we have been making sure that they are investigated at local level. If rapes had taken place and there was a police investigation, that course would obviously be followed.

Fiona Mactaggart: Does the Minister share my concern that mental health services are more at risk of reductions in expenditure, where they have to be made, than some other areas of health provision? As she is aware from figures that I gave her yesterday, the strategic health authority in my local area budgeted for a deficit, and it is making my local mental health services pay for that deficit to a degree that has led a local authority officer to suggest that those services are not safe. What action is my hon. Friend taking to ensure—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must say to the hon. Lady that her question is far too long. Can the Minister try to answer?

Rosie Winterton: We have made it absolutely clear that mental health services should not be asked to pay more than any other trust in a given area; disproportionate sums should not be taken from mental health services. If my hon. Friend has any evidence of more demands being made on mental health than on other areas, I would be more than happy to look into that.

Tim Loughton: No one who has visited a mental health hospital remotely believes the Minister's assertion that 99 per cent. of them offer only single-sex wards: a flimsy curtain across a ward does not constitute a single-sex ward. In 2004, the Mind "wardwatch" campaign estimated that in reality, a quarter of mental health wards were still mixed, and we know that the situation has got worse, as many have had to revert to mixed-sex wards owing to deficit pressures. Only after a freedom of information request by Mind was today's National Patient Safety Agency report published, revealing those 122 reports. There are allegations that those were only the cases that were reported. There was no mention of the cases that went completely unreported.
	Is it not a disgrace that the Government sought to suppress the report eight months ago? Why did they do so? How many people have suffered subsequently because of the Government's complacency and delay? What urgent action are they taking to improve conditions for vulnerable mentally ill patients in future?

Rosie Winterton: Can I be—[Hon. Members: "Absolutely clear?"] Yes, I want to be absolutely clear about what happened to the report. It came to the Department on 16 January. Between that date and 23 May officials worked on the report with the National Patient Safety Agency, examining specific issues, including, for example, whether the allegations of rape had been the subject of a local investigation. It was important that we did not publish information without—particularly with allegations of rape—considering whether there had been a local investigation. That would have put some vulnerable people in an extremely awkward position. We did not want to do that.
	We wanted to work on some of the other data analysis to ensure that that material was accurate and that the NHS could learn lessons from it. At the end of May the report came to Ministers, who signed it off on 5 June. Between then and now we have been examining a follow-up strategy, which has now been agreed. This is the response to the question that the hon. Gentleman asked. What are we intending to do with the information—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must be allowed to proceed down the Order Paper.

Hospitals (Surrey)

Michael Gove: If she will make a statement on the future of Surrey's hospitals.

Caroline Flint: NHS organisations in Surrey recognise that health services must change and adapt to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The local NHS is therefore looking at how it organises, delivers and uses health care, as part of the creating an NHS fit for the future programme. Any proposals that emerge from the review will be subject to a full public consultation later this year, probably in the autumn.

Michael Gove: I thank the Minister for her answer. She will be aware that the Prime Minister visited Frimley Park hospital in my constituency only last month to congratulate the workers of Surrey NHS on the superb service that they deliver. However, only last week primary care trust representatives told me and colleagues from Surrey that there would have to be cuts in all five of our district general hospitals, and that one of those hospitals might have to close. Can we have a guarantee from the Minister that hospitals will not close in Surrey as a result of the Minister's mismanagement of NHS funding?

Caroline Flint: I am sure that there are some excellent examples of service in Surrey. The hon. Gentleman is coming to see me next Tuesday, I understand, to talk through some of his concerns. I cannot promise what he asks. It is important that we ensure that hospitals are fit for service. For example, I know that in north Surrey there has already been the relocation from acute to community settings of dermatology services and vascular surgery services. In north Surrey there is a fall service that provides out-of-hospital support for older people, particularly, who fall, with therapists and ambulance services that work together to prevent hospital admissions.
	There are different approaches, which I saw in Doncaster on Friday. There are community matrons. Ken and Bill, two of my constituents, each had half a dozen visits to hospital last year. This year, they have not attended hospital. That is the sort of service that we want. We want hospitals that work for the community and services that we hope can keep people out of hospital and enable them to enjoy better health for much longer.

Jeremy Hunt: What message does the Minister have for residents of Guildford and south-west Surrey, who met last Thursday to be told that, because of a deficit, the loss of accident and emergency services at the Royal Surrey county hospital is a real possibility? Rather than insulting local NHS managers by saying that the deficit is the result of their incompetence, does the Minister not accept that the root cause of the deficit is her Government's changes to the funding formula, which systematically discriminates against rural areas with many older people?

Caroline Flint: However much money the hon. Gentleman's part of the country has had, it has been overspending for many years. There has been an 11 per cent. rise in admissions to A and E, but up to 80 per cent. of visits are non-urgent or inappropriate. Services will be reviewed to try to find better ways to provide the emergency care that some people need while allowing four out of five patients currently visiting A and E to be treated better and safely in alternative settings.

GP Lists

Philip Hollobone: What the average size was of general practitioner practice lists in (a) England and (b) the Northamptonshire Heartlands primary care trust area in each of the last three years.

Andy Burnham: For the years 2003 to 2005, the average practice list sizes at 30 September each year were 5,968, 6,149 and 6,250 respectively. For Northampton Heartlands primary care trust the equivalent figures were 8,162, 8,214 and 8,132.

Philip Hollobone: Local GPs in north Northamptonshire should be thanked for doing their best with practitioner lists way above the national average. But with 52,100 new houses set to be built in the area in the next 15 years, will the Minister meet his opposite number in the Department for Communities and Local Government to ensure that practitioner lists do not rise further within the foreseeable future?

Andy Burnham: There is considerable variation throughout the country in the number of GPs per 100,000 of the population, ranging from 41 in some of the more deprived parts of the country to 83. The number of GPs in the hon. Gentleman's constituency is less than the national average, but nevertheless it is somewhere around the middle. I pay tribute to GPs in his constituency for providing an excellent service. There are 5,000 more GPs today than there were in 1997, and almost everywhere patients can now see a GP within two working days.

Bob Blizzard: Is my hon. Friend aware that general practices sometimes strike mental health out-patients off their lists because they can become verbally or physically abusive? One can understand that reaction, but sometimes such patients are then allocated another practice 30 or 40 miles away, which is no use to them at all and will not help them to recover their mental health. Will my hon. Friend look into that system to see if we cannot serve such people better, rather than just striking them from a list and sending them miles away?

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend rightly draws our attention to some difficult situations. Obviously, GP practices have to take into account considerations such as the safety of staff and the general relationships within their practices. It is the PCT's responsibility to ensure that everybody has a GP, and it is right that that GP should be as close to the patient's home as possible. If my hon. Friend has examples where that has not happened, I should be grateful if he would bring them to my attention, but we believe that that is the right policy to have.

Stephen O'Brien: Given the increase in the average size of GP lists, how does the Department's recent invitation through the  Official Journal of the European Union—surprisingly drafted in almost exactly the same terms as the one that he embarrassingly had to withdraw just the other day—for private sector bodies to bid for and take over PCT commissioning services and to provide health care services, help to address the problem?

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman is completely confusing two issues. We are talking here about GP services in communities, not PCT commissioning. He referred to the increase in list sizes, but if he had been listening he would know that the figures that I gave show that in 2005 list sizes were lower than in 2003. The hon. Gentleman is a north-west MP and he has far more doctors per 100,000 than I do in my constituency, which is under-doctored, so I make no apology for bringing in private sector companies that are willing to provide a high-quality, open-hours GP service to parts of the country that have traditionally had poorer access to such services. If he has a problem with that, he should say so.

Mental Health Bill

James Duddridge: What progress is being made towards producing a new draft Mental Health Bill.

Patricia Hewitt: On 23 March 2006, the Government announced their intention to produce a Bill to amend the Mental Health Act 1983. This Bill will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows.

James Duddridge: Will the definition of mental disorder remain the same as in the 1983 Act, or will the Secretary of State use the definition that was in the two draft Bills, which would widen the group of people who could be compelled to be treated against their will?

Patricia Hewitt: We will take the opportunity offered by the new Bill to replace the definition in the 1983 Act. We will introduce a new and simplified definition of mental disorder, which in turn will be linked to the new supervised community treatment.

Skin Cancer

John MacDougall: What progress has been made in the prevention of skin cancer; and if she will make a statement.

Caroline Flint: We are concerned about the number of people being diagnosed with skin cancer, which kills more than 2,000 people each year in England and Wales. SunSmart, the national skin cancer prevention campaign, has been funded by the UK Health Departments. This summer, it is focusing on men and outdoor workers.

John MacDougall: I thank my hon. Friend for her response. I welcome the Cancer Research UK SunSmart campaign, which is highlighting the high incidence of cancer among males. There has been a 31 per cent. increase in incidences of cancer in the past decade, and on average 1,000 out of every 1,777 cases of cancer involve males. I urge the health service to promote that message and do the best that it can to raise awareness.

Caroline Flint: I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which I could not have made better myself. On Monday next week, I am meeting my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mrs. James) to discuss how we can control the unsupervised use of tanning beds and coin-operated machines, the use of which by under-16s has caused concern.

G8 Summit

Tony Blair: rose

Hon. Members: Yo! [ Laughter.]

Tony Blair: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I want to make a statement about the G8 summit, which took place between 15 and 17 July in St. Petersburg. I pay tribute to President Putin's chairmanship and the Russian Government's handling of the summit.
	The whole summit was understandably overshadowed by the tragic and terrible events in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. For days, we have seen the innocent killed by terrorism as a deliberate act by Hezbollah, civilians killed in the course of military retaliation by Israel, and the disintegration of our hopes for stability in this, the most fraught area of dispute in the world.
	More than 1,600 rockets and mortars have fallen on northern Israel in an arc from Haifa to Tiberias, deliberately targeting civilians. In Lebanon, more than 230 people have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians. Houses, roads, essential infrastructure, factories and Lebanese army facilities have been damaged. Once again, we urge that account is taken of the humanitarian situation and that military action by Israel is proportionate. We grieve for the innocent Israelis and innocent Lebanese civilians who are dead, for their families that mourn and for their countries that are caught up in the spiral of escalating confrontation.
	There are more than 10,000 registered British nationals in Lebanon, and there are probably many more, including a significant number of dual Lebanese-British nationals. We are working as hard and as quickly as we can to ensure that we can evacuate all those who want to leave. Teams of consular, military and medical officials have been deployed to Beirut, Cyprus and Damascus. We evacuated 63 of the most vulnerable British nationals from Beirut by air yesterday, but the safest way to evacuate large numbers of civilians is by sea. We have six ships in the region or heading for the regionthe York and the Gloucester are now offshore, and the Illustrious, Bulwark, St. Albans and RFA Victoria Fort are heading there. The first evacuation by ship is taking place today, and further evacuations will follow. The advice to British nationals is to stay put and remain in contact with the British embassy.
	We should be in no doubt about the immediate cause of this situation. It started with the kidnap of an Israeli soldier in Gaza and then action by Israel targeting Hamas on the Palestinian side. Then, without provocation, Hezbollah crossed the blue line established by United Nations resolutions, killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two more. Israel then again retaliated with air strikes against targets in Beirut. This situation therefore began with acts of extremism by militant groups that were, as the G8 said unanimously, without any justification and were, of course, designed to provoke the very response that followed.
	In the communiqu issued by the G8, we refer to and condemn the activities of the extremist groups and, more elliptically, as we say, those that support them. For most of us at the G8, we can be less elliptical. Hezbollah is supported by Iran and Syria: by the former in weapons, which incidentally are very similar, if not identical, to those used against British troops in Basra, by the latter, in many different ways; and by both of them financially.
	What is at stake therefore could not be more stark. On the one side, there is Lebanon, a remarkable democratic achievement from the days when Lebanon was a by-word for instability and conflict. I have once again given Prime Minister Siniora my solidarity and support in the immense difficulties he now faces. There are also of course those in Israel and in Palestine desperate to see progress towards the only solution that will ever work there, namely, two statesIsrael and Palestine, both democratic, both independent and both at peace. But on the other side are those who want no compromise and who cannot see that terrorism is not the route to a solution, but a malign, fundamental obstacle to it. They persist in terrorism, knowing that its impact there is the same the world overto divide, to create hatred and to drive out negotiation. That is the purpose of it.
	So what can be done? I know that many wanted the G8 to call for an immediate ceasefire by Israel. Of course, we all want all violence to stop, and to stop immediately, but we recognise that the only realistic way to achieve such a ceasefire is to address the underlying reasons why this violence has broken out.
	In respect of Lebanon, the G8 proposed rapid work on inserting an international security presence in southern Lebanon to stabilise the situation, to ensure that the terrorism from the Lebanese side ends and, most importantly, to provide conditions in which the Lebanese armed forces can take control and assist them in doing so. Meanwhile, the United Nations Secretary-General's special envoys are in the region and will report to the Security Council later this week. We welcome these and other efforts to calm the situation.
	We also encouraged dialogue between the Lebanese and Israeli Governments, and we pledged at the G8 further economic support to Lebanon. And, of course, we demanded the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Only in that way can United Nations Security resolutions 1559 and 1680 in respect of Lebanon be implemented.
	On Gaza, we made it clear that our goal was an immediate end to the violence, and again we put forward the measures necessaryrelease of the Israeli soldiers and of the Palestinian Ministers and parliamentarians; an end to attacks on Israel; resumption of security co-operation between Israel and Palestine; restarting political contacts between Israeli and Palestinian officials; and an end to Israeli military operations and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
	However, let us be plain. We can and must stabilise the existing situation in Lebanon and in Gaza. We must then use such stabilisation to help Lebanon rebuild and eventually to re-begin negotiations between Israel and Palestine. But at root, we need to recognise the fundamental nature of the struggle in this region, which has far-reaching consequenceconsequences far beyond that region and consequences even in countries such as our own. All over the middle east, there are those who want to modernise their nations and who believe, as we do, in democracy and liberty and tolerance, but ranged against them are extremists who believe the oppositewho believe in fundamentalist states and are at war not against Israel's actions, but against its existence. In virtually every country of the region, including on the streets of Baghdad, such a struggle is being played out. When this current crisis abates, that is the issue to which we must return, in the way that the G8 outlined two years ago but has not so far put fully into effect.
	Let me turn to the other issues that were raised at the G8. On Africa, we made modest but important progress in taking forward the commitments of last year, including: scaling up action on HIV/AIDS through replenishing the global fund in 2006 and 2007; new initiatives on vaccines for malaria and pneumococcus; and fully funding the education fast-track initiative. We agreed to review progress on Africa again at the G8 summit in 2007. I have asked the International Development Secretary to set out the key milestones for the coming 12 months in his next report to Parliament. Those will include, for us, supporting 10 African countries, developing long-term education plans and getting the debts cancelled for five more African countries. Kofi Annan will also convene the Africa progress panel to monitor progress on the commitments given.
	I also discussed Sudan with several G8 leaders and Kofi Annan. We agreed that the situation in Darfur continues to be unacceptable and that we need a quick deployment of the UN force.
	On trade, at the final session it was at last agreed by all to empower their negotiators to go further. The cost of the failure of that trade round for the world's poor, global growth and multilateralism would be high. Presidents Bush, Barroso, Lula and Mbeki, Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Singh of India all agreed to show flexibility. Pascal Lamy has been tasked immediately with convening trade negotiators to turn that clear commitment into action, which must deliver real cuts in agricultural tariffs and subsidies and progress on non-agricultural market access. I do not minimise the substantial obstacles that remain, but at least the renewed commitment from the United States, the European Union and the G20 countries was immensely welcome. We also agreed a strong package for poor countries, including $4 billion a year aid for trade and action on rules of origin. We remain fully committed to ensuring that, in any event, it would be utterly wrong for there to be no agreement in this round on a full development package for the poorest nations.
	There was also a fascinating debate on energyof direct relevance to this countryat the summit. There was virtual consensus, in fact, on the following matters: first, energy prices will continue to rise, with a predicted increase of about 50 per cent. in energy demand by 2030. Secondly, climate change is now universally accepted as happening, including by the United States, and there is therefore an urgent necessity to make future economic growth sustainable. Thirdly, countries will need to have balanced energy policies, in which clean coal technology, carbon sequestration, renewables and nuclear power have to play a part. Our energy review was therefore absolutely in line with that consensus.
	On nuclear, it was interesting to note the statement by China that it intends to develop nuclear power, by India that it regarded it as indispensable, and by many of the main oil producers, including Kazakhstan, that they would balance their reliance on their oil and gas with nuclear. That was also the conclusion of the J8the young people from around the world who debated the issue.
	The G8 also agreed on the need to accelerate discussions on an inclusive dialogue for a post-2012 climate change framework and, importantly, that that framework should include the United States, China and India. The G8 supported the need for a goal to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations. The Gleneagles dialogue meeting in Mexico will be the next step in taking that work forward. Finally, we agreed several other texts, which have been placed in the Library.
	The summit was held in circumstances that none of us could have foreseen. It was obviously dominated by the middle east. However, its conclusions on Africa, trade and energy will, I hope, stand the test of time. I commend the conclusions to the House.

David Cameron: I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. It is a deeply troubling time. The citizens of Israel and Lebanon are suffering, many British citizens are caught up in the conflict and there is a real danger that the conflict will escalate. Everyone has been watching as the world's most powerful leaders met in St. Petersburg while a vital region descended into war. They want and expect concerted action.
	The Prime Minister spoke in his statement about creating the conditions for implementing a ceasefire. He is right that they must include the release of Israeli hostages, the end of rocket attacks on Israel and a future for Lebanon without armed militias. Is not it the case that we will achieve lasting peace only by addressing the underlying causes of the crisis? I have some questions about the immediate crisis and the longer-term issues, and wider questions about progress on the Gleneagles agenda.
	The Prime Minister spoke about the differing emphasis in the G8 and the varying degrees of ellipticality, if I may put it like that. Despite that, will there be an intense, co-ordinated and powerful effort to bring about a resolution to the crisis in the coming days? We know that the Prime Minister is considering visiting the middle east. What part will he play in the process and how will it fit in with the role of other countries? He mentioned a UN force to act as a security presence. Can he tell us what its mandate would be, which countries have, so far, shown willingness to contribute and, given John Bolton's remarks, does it have the full support of the United States?
	Stability requires the Lebanese Government to exercise full control over their country and to disband the militias. Does not that mean that United Nations Security Council resolution 1559 needs to be implemented in full? As the Prime Minister said, it is now clear for all to see that the involvement of Iran and Syria in Hamas and Hezbollah is deeply destructive and needs to be addressed.
	The whole House will be concerned about the safety of British citizens in the middle east. The Minister for the Middle East, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), said yesterday that this was potentially the biggest British evacuation since Dunkirk. What clear advice is being given to British citizens? Will the Prime Minister tell us what arrangements have been put in place to ensure that the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office work together as one in a co-ordinated way? The Prime Minister mentioned the warships that have been sent to the eastern Mediterranean. Is he confident that there is sufficient capacity to evacuate everyone for whom we are responsible and to accommodate them in Cyprus?
	Tackling the long-term causes will involve restarting the road map, tackling Iran's nuclear ambitions and ending Syrian involvement in Lebanon. The US has offered to have direct talks with Iran, should enrichment activity be fully suspended. Does the Prime Minister agree that there is no longer any excuse for Iranian intransigence? With these significant developments in this strategically vital part of the world, and with so many British citizensconstituents of ourscaught up in the crisis, does the Prime Minister agree that we need a full-scale foreign affairs debate before Parliament rises for the summer recess?
	On Gleneagles, I welcome what the Prime Minister said about the progress that has been made over the past year. On the target for HIV treatments by 2010, it is vital that interim targets be set, as we suggested. Were those targets backed specifically by the G8? A successful trade round will do more than anything to alleviate poverty. The Prime Minister said that, at the end of the G8, leaders were empowered to show flexibility. Should we be concerned that the list of leaders that he read out did not include President Chirac of France?
	Time is running out. Is not this one of those moments that represents a genuine test for the G8, for the short and long term? There is a vital need for a trade deal, and today, as hundreds of innocent civilians are dying in Israel and Lebanon and thousands of British citizens remain trapped in the conflict, is there not an urgent need for concerted action to deal with the crisis?

Tony Blair: I agree in essence with what the right hon. Gentleman has said. Let me just respond to some of the points that he raised. First, there will of course be an intense effort at Thursday's meeting of the United Nations Security Council to talk about this issue. The question of a stabilisation force or a security presence will be debated there. That proposal was supported by all the G8 countries. Of course, it will take time to build up such a force, and we will need the circumstances to be conducive to its going into southern Lebanon. I have said constantly over the past few days that even if we manage to stabilise the existing situation and to calm it down, there will still be a risk of a recrudescence of what has happened recently unless a force is put in there. If we are able to stabilise the situation, it will be important that we put in place mechanisms that will allow Lebanon to take more control of its own future.
	That leads me to the important point that the United Nations Security Council resolution 1559 in respect of Lebanon was passed 20 months ago. People sometimes forget that. It called for the disbanding of all the militias in southern Lebanon and for an end to all the support being given to them. It also called for the Lebanese forces to be able to take control of the whole country. So it is not as though we have never been able to predict the possibility of such circumstances arising. It is therefore important to recognise that we will have to ensure that that resolution is implemented. It will be very difficult to do that, however, given the state of the Lebanese Government and the Lebanese nation at the present time.
	That leads me on to the next point, which has to do with Iran and Syria as they effectively support Hezbollah, financially and with weapons. That is why we will of course keep up the diplomatic pressure on Iran to comply with its international obligations, and we urge Syria to take the action that it could take in relation to Hezbollah if it wanted to do so.
	We believe that by the end of the week, as the Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence said, we can evacuate about 5,000 British citizens and dual nationals. The first ship is docking today; another ship will take even more people tomorrow, and we are making progress on that as rapidly as possible.
	We did agree again with the G8 targets on Africa and, yes, I did choose reasonably carefully those people I listed as being in favour of flexibility at the World Trade Organisation. It is important to recognise that each of the main actors has to determine their position by reference to somebody else: President Bush makes reference to Congress; the G20 nations meet as a collective; Brazil and India cannot simply take the decision on their own; and, of course, the European Union has its own procedures and has to agree a position. What was good was the virtually unanimous view around the table that we need to make progress at the WTO, and a very strong statement from the UN Secretary-General to that effect. It was very much as a result of what was said by us and other countries that Pascal Lamy was able to attend the summit. I hope that the talks will make progress. If they do not, it will be a very great failure, and the right hon. Gentleman is right to imply that such a failure is the last thing we need at this moment. We need to show multilateral institutions succeeding, and it is for that reason, among many others, that I hope that the WTO talks succeed.

Menzies Campbell: It is clear that there was much constructive work done at the G8 in relation to Africa, the Doha round and energy, but it was inevitable, as today has already demonstrated, that the concentration would be on the middle east. We can agree that the recent events constitute a threat to the stability of the whole region. We can also agree that we will be able to rely on the professionalism of our armed forces to effect the necessary evacuation of British citizens. However, will the Government, on Thursday in New York, press for the Security Council to call for an unconditional and immediate ceasefire? How will it be possible to insert an international force unless there is a ceasefire? Such a force could hardly fight its way in.
	We must all accept that the indiscriminate firing of rockets and missiles into Israel by Hezbollah is unacceptable, but so too is the targeted and systematic destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon. What would happen if the Lebanese Government, already weakened, were to fall? What, indeed, will happen if the prediction of the Israeli Chief of Staffthat Lebanon will go back to what it was 20 years agocomes about? Who will fill the vacuum that will be caused as a result? How will that be in the interests of long-term stability and peace in the region?
	We must all accept that Israel has a moral and a legal right to live in peace within recognised and secure borders, but does the Prime Minister accept that that right does not legitimise action that is disproportionate and amounts to collective punishment, both in Lebanon and in Gaza?

Tony Blair: I agree that we want a ceasefire and an end to hostilities, but that will happen only if it happens on all sides. As I said in my statement, it is important that action by Israel is proportionate, but we have to understand how this began and the underlying reasons for its beginning. Those reasons are that there are groups that have decided to take these steps at this moment. They are completely disregarding the welfare of Lebanon and, indeed, of Palestinians in Gaza. They have decided to take action that means that Israel will, of course, defend itself because, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman rightly says, it has a moral and legal right to do so.
	The only way that we are going to get a solutionbecause whatever our nuances, we are all essentially in the same placeis, first, to put in place a strategy to calm the situation, and secondly, to deal with those deep underlying causes. That is why it is important to discuss the stabilisation force. It cannot, of course, fight its way in, but if we end up with the conditions negotiated for a cessation of hostilities, we at least need to consider having some sort of buffer force between Lebanon and Israel to allow us to create a situation in which the same problem does not break out again.
	In the end, it depends on what one believes about why this happened. One can take two views. One can take the view that it was a spontaneous occurrence as a result of what was happening in Gaza. Alternatively, one can take the view, as I am afraid I do, that it was not spontaneous, but was a deliberate act of strategy to ensure that the conflict was widened. If one takes the latter view, that means that those who began the conflict in Lebanon will not give up easily. Israel will defend itself, and it is therefore important for the international community to find the means of enforcing a cessation of hostilities on both sides. We can rest assured that unless the Israeli soldiers are released and the rockets1,500 of which have come over to the Israeli sideare stopped, Israel will carry on defending itself. A cessation of hostilities is needed on both sides, and measures need to be taken to try to prevent this from happening again while we work on the underlying problems in that region, which, increasingly in my view, are directly connected in an arc from Iran right across the middle east.

Mike Gapes: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred to the need for an international security presence. He knows that there has been an international presence in Lebanon for many years. Can he clarify the implication of the current proposal? Will any force be under the United Nations? Will it be under chapter VI or chapter VII? How will it be deployed, and under what rules of engagement? Can he also emphasise what is being done to ensure that the conflict is not widened, which is a great danger? He has referred to Syria and Iran and their support for Hezbollah. What is being done by the G8 to ensure that Syria does not get involved and that the conflagration does not widen throughout the whole region?

Tony Blair: As my hon. Friend rightly implies, we must put every pressure on Syria. In a sense, the most important point is that the conflict has already been widenedthat was the purpose of the incursion into northern Israel. It is therefore important to ensure that we now back off the situation. He is right that the United Nations interim force in Lebanon, which is about 1,600 to 1,800 strong, has been there for many years. If we put in a stabilisation force, it must be of a different order of magnitude, with a proper chapter VII resolution and with serious rules of engagement. Those matters will be discussed over the days and no doubt weeks to come, and if there is a better idea I would like to hear it. However, I do not see how we get this stopped and remove the danger of it starting again unless some objective measure is taken, by way of force, to prevent Hezbollah beginning such action again when those behind it decide that it is strategically advantageous to do so.

Andrew MacKay: The Prime Minister failed to respond to the Leader of the Opposition's request for an urgent debate on the middle east. Will he now confirm that that debate will take place, because our constituents will not understand if the House rises next week without such a debate?

Tony Blair: The only reason why I did not do so is that, obviously, that discussion should take place between the usual channels. I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, however, and I understand its importance.

Louise Ellman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the most ominous aspect of the current crisis is Iranian and Syrian support for the terrorist organisations, Hezbollah and Hamas, which are both pledged to destroy Israel? Does he agree that it is proportionate for Israel to defend itself against unwarranted aggression from organisations that pledge that country's destruction?

Tony Blair: Of course it is important for Israel to defend itself, and I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that it should do so in a proportionate way that minimises the dangers of civilian casualties. She is, however, right to say that the root of the problem is support for groups that do not want a peaceful solution to the problems of the region. The tragedy of the situation is that Lebanon has made so much progress over the past few years, and now that progress is being put at riskbut it is being put at risk as a result of a deliberate strategy to destabilise the country.

Peter Tapsell: During his rather charmingly self-depreciative luncheon conversation with President Bush at St. Petersburg about Syria and sweaters, did the Prime Ministerafter he had switched off the microphonemake any attempt to explain to the President that one of the root causes of the spread of chaos in the middle east has been the failure, over 40 years, of successive American Administrations to persuade Israel to accept United Nations resolution 242, which requires it to return to its legal frontiers of 1967? That failure has caused an inevitable degree of bitterness, which has led to the creation and sustaining of various guerrilla militias which are now increasingly regarded as part of an Islamic jihad.

Tony Blair: If it were merely that the cause of all this was the failure to abide by resolution 242, which we supportbut there must be a better explanation for the rejection of the agreement that President Clinton reached with the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Prime Minister Barak, and the offer that was made to the Palestinian Authority then. There must be a better explanation for what happened with the road map, which provides a perfectly sensible way through this. We had to battle very hard to get America and Israel to agree to the road map, but the defaulting in respect of that was not on the Israeli side. There must be a better explanation as to why it cannot now be agreed on the Palestinian side that if there is to be a two-state solution, that means recognising Israel's right to exist.
	I do not say that mistakes have not been made in relation to this, through America, through ourselves, and through others over the years, but I think that the issue is now far more fundamental. The fact is that America would take this forward and deliver a two-state solution for the Palestinian peopleI am sure of thatif we could secure the simple acceptance that only through non-violent, democratic negotiation can such a solution be found.

Mark Lazarowicz: Of course Israel has the right to self-defence against terrorism, but surely what is going on now in Lebanon and Gaza goes far beyond any legitimate self-defence. Must not the world community make it clear that if it is unacceptable, as it obviously is, for Hezbollah and Hamas to fire rockets at civilian targets in Israel, it is also unacceptable for Israel to target civilians and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon? The world must say that clearly, or it will encourage those in Israel and those on the other side of the conflict who want to provoke further action leading to further military conflict on a wider scale throughout the region.

Tony Blair: I understand my hon. Friend's concern that the reaction of Israel has been disproportionate. It is a difficult situation. We can imagine how it would be in our own democracy if we were faced with such a situationif our own citizens were being killed through hostile action. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are now in shelter, having been evacuated from their homes, and their soldiers have been killed in such a brutal way.
	I do not want to repeat myself, but there is only one way in which we can change the situation. People can go this way or that in terms of whom they wish to condemn, but, as I know my hon. Friend would accept, this began with an unprovoked attack by Hezbollah on Israel, and I do not think that one can really be surprised at the response.

Ian Taylor: May I switch the subject to what was a backdrop to the G8 summitthe position of President Putin and his attitude to the use of energy almost as a weapon of diplomacy? Did the Prime Minister have time to talk to President Putin about what is going on in Russia, and about what Russia's ambitions are in the near area, as he calls it? That is particularly relevant, given that the need for this country to invest in nuclear power is partly due to our need for a sense of assurance about our sources of energy, because of the threat that Russia may one day use our need for energy against us.

Tony Blair: We did discuss that, and the Russians gave a clear assurance that they would abide by the charter on energy that we drew up and promulgated at the summit. I expressed my view, as I always do, that the only way to make progress in Russia or elsewhere is by adherence to democratic principles. To be fair, the Russian President made it very clear that he understands people's anxieties about security of supply, which was the reason why he felt it right to adopt and agree to the charter that we all signed. The hon. Gentleman is right that one of the reasons why it is so important to have a balanced energy policy is to ensure that we are not too reliant on any one source.

Khalid Mahmood: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the ongoing escalation of violence over the last eight years has continued because of the targeted nature of the Israeli response to the extreme groups within Gaza, Palestine and Lebanon, which deliberately attempts to inflame the situation? The unprecedented response of the Israelis, involving the killing of children and civilians and the targeting of infrastructure, is an attempt to weaken the forces of the Palestinian Authority and the Lebanese army and there is no way that that will support their cause. I support the idea of having an international stabilisation force, not just in Lebanon, but in Gaza and Palestine, in order to cessate the forces that are continually launching attacks on Israel and to secure the necessary protection.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must have just one supplementary question; otherwise, it is unfair to other hon. Members.

Tony Blair: I would simply say that I entirely understand my hon. Friend's concern, but the trouble is that, in the end, the purpose of terrorism is to provoke retaliation, which then provokes further bloodshed and misery. That is why we have to go back to the root cause of the terrorism.

Nicholas Soames: Would the Prime Minister accept that I strongly believe that it would be a great mistake to try to beef up UNIFIL? Such an international force would have to be very substantial if it were to command the ground; otherwise it would be basebound, in fear of its life against Hezbollah suicide bombersthey saw off MNF-II in 1983 and would do it again. I agree with the Prime Minister's analysis, but I urge him to acknowledge that what matters most is to get the two-state talks going again and fully to engage the United States of America and the European Union together towards that end. After all, it was the Americans and the French who saw off the Syrians. This is not a lost cause and I urge the Prime Minister to proceed with all possible speed.

Tony Blair: Essentially, I agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I agree in respect of UNIFIL that it would have to be a completely different type of force, but its purpose would be to provide security for the time that it takes for the Lebanese forces to come down. After all, that was what was supposed to happen with resolution 1559: the militias were supposed to be cleared out and the Lebanese forces were supposed to come in. The truth is that that has never happened.

Elliot Morley: May I associate myself with my right hon. Friend's remarks on the middle east crisis, which clearly overshadowed the summit, and particularly on the need for a proportionate response? I also thank him for his positive response to the statement from the G8 plus 5 group of legislators organised by GLOBE UK, the Global Legislators' Organisation for a Balanced Environment. I congratulate the Prime Minister on his success in including some of those objectives, such as the need to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions and the need for an inclusive framework, but can he assure me that the other G8 leaders recognise the other aspect of the statementthe urgency of the need to tackle climate change and the question whether Germany will continue that process under its presidency?

Tony Blair: I thank my hon. Friend for his work in that area. Had it not been for the fact that the middle east so much overshadowed the summit, I would have spent quite a long time on the energy conclusions, which areas he saysinteresting and positive. There is an agreement to take the G8 plus 5 dialogue forward. There is also an agreement to ensure that we have a framework that stabilises greenhouse gas emissions and the US has also signed up to that. Round the table, it was interesting that every single person accepted the urgency of the issue and the need to develop the right framework very quickly to make progress, so that the private sector in particular, but also countries, are incentivised to develop the science and technology necessary to deal with it. Again, I thank my hon. Friend for his input into that.

Elfyn Llwyd: The Prime Minister very fairly said that progress on Africa was modest. With regard to the G8 sanctioning initiatives to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa, when shall we have practical decisions and not just declarations on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the urgently needed programmes to bring education to the 100 million poor children in Africa?

Tony Blair: Actually, substantial sums of money have been pledged to the global health fundhundreds of millions, if not several billion dollars. In respect of malaria, a plan is in place and the funding is being built up for it. Education is an important part of the discussion and this country has pledged 8.5 billion over the next 10 years for education in the poorest parts of the world in Africa. Although there is a lot more to do on education, there was a very strong recommitment to the funding and the principles of action that were set out at Gleneagles last year.

Gisela Stuart: Could my right hon. Friend say a little more about his talks on the security of energy supply? He predicts an increase in energy demand of 50 per cent. by 2030, but given that we need to ensure, in our national interests, that we have security of supply, does he think that our energy review has paid sufficient attention to how much energy we will need to produce in our own country?

Tony Blair: That is a very good point. Although we have pushed this to its furthest extent on renewables, energy efficiency and replacing nuclear power stations, my hon. Friend is right in that we will go from virtual self-sufficiency in oil and gas to 80 to 90 per cent. dependency on imports. A third of our generating capacity will close in the next 15 or 20 years and energy prices are set to rise. But that is the most that we believe we can achieve in this energy review at present. In years to come, people will have to look at how they can drive the process even faster forward.

David Heathcoat-Amory: May I return the Prime Minister to what, in conversation with President Bush, he referred to as the trade thingy and, in particular, the serious situation facing the Doha trade liberalisation round? As we do not have our own trade policy in this country, will he talk urgently to Commissioner Mandelson, who does control our trade policy, and ask him to face down the forces of protectionism in Europe and table a more generous offer? The price of failure will not be paid by us or other member states, but by the poorest people in the poorest countries in the world.

Tony Blair: At the risk of shocking us both, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman on that. I would point out only that the statement made by Commissioner Mandelson was very strong on that point. If a whole series of fresh offers are laid on the table, there will definitely be a battle in many different parts of the world over whether they can be implemented. It is worth pointing out that everything that is on the table at the moment is conditional on everything else being agreed. But if people even did what they have offered now, this trade round would be two or three times more effective than the last trade round. The trouble is that until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed. That is the purpose of the more generous offers.

Mark Durkan: As deadly violence again convulses the middle east, is the lesson for that region that peoples will find stability not in being secure against each other, but in being secure with each other, including against terrorism? The Prime Minister has been less elliptical about Syria and Iran: can he also be less elliptical about the proportionality of Israel's offensive response? Can he also be less elliptical about the prospects for trade justice? Does the statement that
	we remain fully committed to ensuring that in any event it would be utterly wrong for there not to be a full development package for the poorest
	mean that there will definitely be such a package? If so, of what order and in what time scale?

Tony Blair: I accept the implied rebuke of my syntax. The answer is that I thinkit has to be agreedthat there will be, in any event, an agreement on a development package. We have a far better chance of getting a development package if there is an overall agreement on the trade round. My hon. Friend, from the process in which he is engaged, will find it interesting to think that 10 years ago, it looked as though the Palestinian peace process was in better shape than that in Northern Ireland. The lesson of the last 10 years is that, unless people are put into a process that ensures continual dialogue, the danger is that the extremes take over, because there is a political vacuum there.

Patrick Cormack: Accepting entirely the good sense of the G8 statement on the middle east and both what the Prime Minister said today and what the Minister for the Middle East so admirably said yesterday, will the Prime Minister tell the House precisely what the United Kingdom and the United States are doing to bring home this message in Tehran, in Damascus and, on the subject of disproportionality, in Jerusalem?

Tony Blair: We are doing absolutely everything that we can in the contacts that we have had with the Israeli Governmentmyself with the Prime Ministerand obviously with the other Governments in the region. In respect of Iran, as well, it is partly, I would say, as a result of the efforts of this country that we can put before Iran, and in a sense flush out a response, a very sensible and generous offer by the international communityplus the offer by the United States of America, for the first time in 20 years, that it would talk directly to the Iranians. All that has come about in part because of the efforts of this country. My belief is that the only ultimate security in that region is the spread of democracy and liberty. When that happens, we will find that, as I am sure would happen if the Iranians were given a proper free election, there would be perfectly sensible people who would govern their country and who would want to live in peace with their neighbours.

Chris Bryant: When it comes to the middle east, does not the international community also need to examine its own conscience somewhat? We rightly required Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon, but then we failed to provide the policing resources to make sure that there was a secure border there. We failed to stand up as an international community to Israeli land grabs and we failed to make sure that Iran and Syria stopped supplying Hezbollah. We failed to provide an honest broker in the international community. Is it not time that we put the United Nations fairly and squarely in the driving seat, rather than messing around with other organisations, and is it not time to make sure that we get a proper policing force not only into southern Lebanon, but into Gaza?

Tony Blair: What my hon. Friend says is very fair and very right. I was just looking at resolution 1559, passed almost two years ago in September 2004, which said that the UN was:
	Gravely concerned at the continued presence of armed militias in Lebanon.
	It called for
	the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias,
	and supported
	the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory.
	That was after the withdrawal in the year 2000. He is absolutely right: the fact is that we did not commit significant enough resources to make sure that that was implemented.

Vincent Cable: Returning to energy, what confidence can we have in the ability of political leaders to predict that energy prices will continue to rise for the next 25 years, and to base their policies on that, when exactly the same prediction made 25 years ago in response to the last energy shock proved to be comprehensively wrong?

Tony Blair: I think that what we can say with certainty is that there is no certainty for the future. However [ Interruption. ] Well, just consider what would happen if the prediction was right, which must at least be a possibility. If we actually had a 50 per cent. increase in demand by 2030, people would look askance at the policy makers todaysince we need to provide for the long termif we failed at least to take the right precautionary measures to make sure that we had a balanced energy supply. That is what I am saying. What is different between the prediction now and that of 30 years ago is that it is now certain that China and India will consume a far larger part of the world's energy supply. What is not certain is the way in which the world might deal with that. The growth of China and India is driving the current situation, and it will continue to do so.

Andrew MacKinlay: I welcome the comments that the Prime Minister made a few moments ago about the regime in Iran and the need for democracy there. We should bear in mind his carefully crafted and measured remarks in paragraph 6 of his statement. He drew the House's attention to the fact that Hezbollah is getting weapons from Iran. He also said that by an amazing coincidence, the same weapons are being used against our troops in Basra. He needs to amplify that point. Does he agree that although we recognise the delicate nature of the situation and its gravity, some of us feel that we have been too soft on Iran and have not said what we mean, and meant what we say, and accused it of being the arch-exporter of terrorism?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is right that there is no doubt at all that it is supporting terrorist activity around the region, which is precisely one of the reasons why people are extremely alarmed by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. I have heard several people say in the past few days that if Iran is prepared to encourage and support action that destabilises a region such as Lebanon, think how much more dangerous it would be if we had Iran with a nuclear weapon.

John Redwood: What action is the United Nations immediately taking to try to get parties around the table to bring this awful violence to an end in the middle east? Is its plan to exclude or include representatives of the terrorist groups in such talks?

Tony Blair: The UN envoys are out in the region now. I am not answering questions for them, and to whom they talk is up to them, but I would imagine that they would talk to representatives of everyone there, including Hezbollah. However the parties come around the table, it is perfectly obvious that the only solution is to rewind the things that have happened, including by ensuring that the soldiers are released and the rocket attacks are stopped. Rocket and mortar attacks of more than 1,500 or 1,600 represent a substantial bombardment on any basis.

Harry Cohen: While I agree with much of what the Prime Minister says, especially about the release of the Israeli soldiers and an end to all attacks on civilians, does he understand that given the history of bloody-mindedness on both sides in the middle east and our own heavy commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no public support in this country for this country to be involved in any extended conflict with Iran and Syria?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend said that he agreed with much of what I said, which I shall accept gratefully. No one wants conflict with Iran or Syria. The problem is raised in a very acute way by the offer that has been made by the European ThreeFrance, Germany and the UKand America, Russia and China. We have put forward an offer to Iran that essentially protects its ability to develop civil nuclear power but restrains its ability to develop a nuclear weapon. The offer is on the table. It could talk to America and the whole of the relationship could be changed. The problem is that I remember being told time after time, If only we got America to talk to us, things would be different, but it is done, and then things are not different. At some point one must ask whether there is sincerity on Iran's part or not. There is no plan whatever to take such action against Iran. I am willing to consider any form of diplomacy that brings about a change, but if there is not some give on the Iranian part at some point, we are left with some fairly stark choices.

Edward Vaizey: Could the Prime Minister develop his answer to that question and to the question by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay)? He said that he had spoken to many people at the G8, pointing out how dangerous, given Iran's actions in support of Hezbollah, a nuclear Iran would be. Did he detect at the G8 summit greater resolution on the part of all his colleagues on the international stage to bring Iran to the table and force a resolution to that nuclear crisis?

Tony Blair: I did notice that. The fact that the G8 statement was agreed, albeit in elliptical terms, made it clear that we were sure about where this began. That was an important step forward in itself. As for Iran, time and again it must be reminded of the fact that the world has no aggressive intent towards it, but if it exports aggression, it is very hard for us not to confront that reality. Underneath it is the wider issue that I have talked about, but the fact that the G8 statement was agreed and that the G8 plus 5 in effect endorsed it was significant.

Tony Lloyd: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend would agree that if there is to be long-term stability in the middle east, something that must change is the position of Lebanon. That state has been enfeebled by its neighbours, Syria and Israel, for their own misguided purposes, which prevents a long-term solution. What can be done to strengthen the Government in Beirut to make sure that Lebanon can deal with the problem of Hezbollah?

Tony Blair: The point that my right hon. Friend is making is exactly the reason for resolution 1559. The only way, in the end, in which a state makes sure that it is in charge is for it to be in charge of force within the country. The problem is that Hezbollah militias are a constant thorn in the side of Lebanon, preventing that situation from being realised, which is why the resolution was passed. This time, we must make sure that it is implemented.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Prime Minister has made some unequivocal statements this afternoon about Syria. Is he contemplating the recall of our ambassador to London for consultation, and will he use his much improved relations with the regime in Libya to urge Colonel Gaddafi to use his influence on Hezbollah to rein in its forces?

Tony Blair: We have no plans to recall our ambassador, but yes, we are using our relationships with all the different Arab countries to make sure that pressure is put on Syria and Iran. It was interesting to see the statements that emanated from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries, including, I think, Egypt, as they were surprisingly firm in their intent towards what those two countries are doing.

Tom Levitt: There is no doubt that the present crisis started with the illegal kidnap of one Israeli soldier, but many Members on both sides of the House believe that the Israeli response, which took out electric and water supplies for tens of thousands of people in Gaza, was an act of disproportionality that led events to spiral out of control. The Palestinian Authority is not in a position readily to restore those services, so can my right hon. Friend talk to President Abbas about ways in which we could help to restore electricity and water supplies, as their absence endangers the health and lives of many thousands of people? Can we redouble our political commitment to ensure that those supplies are never destroyed again?

Tony Blair: Of course, we put a big reconstruction effort into the Palestinian Authority. My hon. Friend is right to say that it is terrible when infrastructure is destroyed in that way. The problem in the end is that when the disengagement from Gaza took place, my ideaothers had it toowas that the international community would move in behind a Palestinian Authority that was growing in effectiveness, with increasing control over its own security forces, thus creating the conditions in which private investment could be made. Indeed, a series of people were lined up, waiting to go in and invest. It is not what happened. Once the immediate situation calms, we must go back and work out with the Palestinian Authority a proper plan that allows that Authority to take charge of its own destiny. Rather as with Lebanon but on a much greater scale, there are people who are operating outside the proper control of the authority, whose purpose is often to disrupt the very progress that we want to make.

Tony Baldry: The Prime Minister said that there would be a review of progress on Africa at the G8 summit in 2007. Can we make it clear to our G8 colleagues that the test of progress in 2007 is the extent to which G8 members have delivered on the promises that they made at Gleneagles in 2005? Unless we hold to that process, the danger is that after the modest indications at this summit, Africa will slip off the agenda altogether?

Tony Blair: Obviously that is a danger, but I do not think it will happen. Germany has made it clear that for next year's summit Africa will be a major topic, and Germany will review the progress again. We will set out the milestones for the next year. There is sufficient strength in civic society for us to keep people up to the mark, and we intend to use all our efforts to do so.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Speaker: Order. I can call all the Members standing, but they must be brief.

Gordon Prentice: I will be brief. Twenty years after Chernobyl, was there any discussion of the report of the nuclear safety and security group, and what conclusions did the leaders reach?

Tony Blair: Yes, in the conclusions there is discussion about nuclear safety and what can be done in relation to it. It was agreed that we need to co-operate not just on safety, but on the decommissioning of nuclear waste and the development of the new generation of nuclear power stations.

Julian Lewis: Given that much sympathy has been expressed for the Government of Lebanon as being helpless to control Hezbollah, does the Prime Minister have any indication that the Government of Lebanon have asked for assistance from the international community to help them to do so?

Tony Blair: I have spoken to the Prime Minister of Lebanon. I think Lebanon is looking for international help. The precise way in which that is used and the implications for its own armed forces are matters for debate. I believe the Prime Minister of Lebanon wants to do the right thing. The people around him are desperate for some stability in their country and they feel very angry that they are caught in the present situation. We should be helping them in any way we can.

David Anderson: I welcome the news about the education for Africa initiative. On the middle east, we learned yesterday that the intention of Israel is to create an unmanned buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Will that do anything other than bring more problems to that region? Will my right hon. Friend please make a case for not doing that?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend's comments underline the need at least to debate seriously the idea of an international force there.

Graham Stuart: Members across the House will welcome the report from the Prime Minister that the G8 recognise the need for a goal to help stabilise climate change emissions. Can the Prime Minister give us some idea when he hopes that will be concludedhe mentioned that progress would go ahead in Mexicoand what type of goal he would like to see?

Tony Blair: The goal should be a stabilisation of the world's climate and temperature. I do not know how far the G8 plus 5 dialogue in Mexico will move us forward, but there is now agreement in principle that such a framework should be developed.

Richard Burden: I agree with my right hon. Friend that there is neither excuse nor justification for rocket attacks, whether on Ashkelon or Haifa, but I find his comment that Israel has not defaulted on its road map obligations astonishing. Surely he is aware that long before Hamas was elected, and while Hamas was on ceasefire for the best part of a year, Israel was building a wall in Palestinian territory and expanding illegal settlements. What is that, if not defaulting on its road map obligations?

Tony Blair: I understand exactly why my hon. Friend says that, but the whole purpose of the road map was to create a series of mutual obligations. On settlements, he is absolutely right and we have made our position clear on them all the time. In the end, settlements can be a block to the eventual resolution of this dispute. But the reason why we were not on the road map was that people kept coming ininto the territory of Israeland killing innocent Israeli civilians. So what I say to my hon. Friend, as I would say to others, is that the only way that this situation will be unwound is by getting back to the mutual obligations that exist for both sides in the road map.

Mark Pritchard: Some moments ago, the Prime Minister said, We are doing everything we can. Has he had a personal conversation with President Assad of Syria, and if not, why not, given that the Government are doing everything they can?

Tony Blair: I am not sure that a personal conversation between me and President Assad will do a great deal of good, if I may respectfully say so. I think that Syria knows perfectly well what is required of it, and the only question is whether it wants to do it.

Jeremy Corbyn: We all obviously regret all the violence that is taking place in the region. The Prime Minister conceded that the Israeli actions in Lebanon and Gaza were disproportionate; if Israel carries on destroying the airport, roads, water supplies, electricity plant and a lot of civilian infrastructureand killing civilians fleeing for their liveswhat sanctions does he think should be applied against Israel to persuade it to desist from the expansionist intentions that it seems to be pursuing?

Tony Blair: The only way to stop what I want to see stoppedthe killing of innocent civiliansis through the process that we describe in our statement. Honestly, that is the only realistic way that we will do that.

Points of Order

Michael Penning: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Outside the Palace of Westminster today there is a large delegation of my constituents, who have come to demonstrate their opposition to the closure of the Hemel Hempstead hospital. The temperature outside is more than 100 degrees, and with Westminster Hall closed there are few facilities within the Palace to allow them to come in from the excessive heat. Until the new visitor centre is open, can you advise me, Mr. Speaker, on how we can accommodate visitors to the Palace, such as my constituents, which is surely what we all want to do?

Mr. Speaker: Sorry, I did not pick up the hon. Gentleman's last point; I was being advised. I believe that he was asking about visitors; did he mention the visitor centre?

Michael Penning: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What I am trying to say is that until the visitor centre is complete, and with Westminster Hall completely out of action, what facilities are there for our constituents when they come to Parliament to perform their democratic right of lobbying this House against things that they are not happy about?

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that we have a difficulty in that respect. The hon. Gentleman realises that the great hall of Westminster is like a building site. I visited it last week, and things are difficult for visitors at present.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned people who are demonstrating outside. They have the democratic right to come to Parliament and express their concerns to Members. The temperatures outside are exceptional; I have never experienced such temperatures in the 27 years that I have been coming to London every weekit was exceptionally warm when I was out at 8 o'clock this morning. I will ask the Serjeant at Arms to look into the possibility of at least making available water facilitiesbottled water or cool water, perhapsbecause it is unreasonable to expect people to stand in such heat. I will instruct the Serjeant at Arms to see what we can do, at the very least to find water for visitors.

Michael Gove: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In a written statement issued today, the Minister for Housing and Planning made it clear that home condition reportsthe central part of the Government's proposed home information packswill be withdrawn; they will no longer be made mandatory. A flagship element of the Government's Housing Act 2004 has been scuttled by Ministers, and yet the Minister concerned has not come to the Dispatch Box to explain why she has retreated under fire. Is that not a gross discourtesy to the House?

Mr. Speaker: The good news is that that will be debated tomorrow.

Graham Stuart: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You may recall that yesterday the Minister with responsibility for the police accused me of misleading my constituents on the subject of the cost of police mergers. Can you advise me on how I might reverse that outrageous slur made in this House?

Mr. Speaker: I was present then, and the Minister concerned did refer to the hon. Gentleman's misleading his constituents outside Parliament. My problem is that I have enough to do here in Parliament, without worrying about the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I am sure that he will find a way to put the record right. The Minister concerned is a reasonable person and he will [Interruption.] He is very reasonable. He comes from good Donegal stock, and he will listen to what the hon. Gentleman has to say.

Food Labelling

David Amess: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to introduce a uniform system for the labelling of food and drinks retailed in England and Wales to show the quantity of salt, sugar and fats they contain; and for connected purposes.
	The Department of Health survey for England revealed that incidents of obesity have more than trebled in the past 20 years. For adults, that represents a rise of between 14 and 16 per cent., based on body mass index calculations for obesity. The rising obesity figures for children revealed by the survey for that period are even more alarming. While there was little change between 1974 and 1984, between 1984 and 1994 the prevalence of obesity increased to 1.7 per cent. of boys and 2.6 per cent. of girls. By 2002, those figures had risen to the extent that 5.5 per cent. of boys and 7.2 per cent. of girls in England aged two to 15 years were categorised as obese.
	Projecting these figures forward 15 yearsassuming that incidents of obesity continue to increase steadilyit is shockingly estimated that one third of adults in England will be obese by 2020. A Royal College of Physicians report estimates that, if the rapid acceleration in childhood obesity that we have witnessed continues, incidence of obesity in children could rise above 50 per cent. by 2020.
	I could go on with these statistics, but bemoaning the state that we have got ourselves into will not bring about change and reverse the damage already done. That is why I am presenting this Bill, which seeks to provide just one measure that might help consumers in Britain to make healthier choices about the foods that they buy in a market flooded with pre-packaged, mass-produced foods with long lists of complex ingredients. A single format for simplified front-of-package nutrition informationgiving the amounts of salt, sugar and fat contained in the product, combined with an interpretive element such as colour codingwould certainly bring about a positive change in the way that we shop and eat. Moreover, if such a scheme is not taken up voluntarily by the food manufacturing and retail industries, the Government ought to make provision to ensure that standards are enforceable.
	As the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Jim Dowd) said in his splendid Adjournment debate last week, the Health Select Committee's inquiry into obesity, which reported in May 2004, is indeed its magnum opus. The report highlighted the growing prevalence of obesity in the UK and its effect on people's health, and the consequent impact on the health service of increasing incidence of weight-related illnesses such as heart disease and type-2 diabetes. The Committee estimated that the associated costs are between 3.3 billion and 3.7 billion a year, and this figure will continue to rise unless urgent steps are taken.
	Nutrition-based advice pertaining to the calorie or fat content in foods can often be misleading. For example, a product advertised as 90 per cent. fat-free still contains 10 per cent. fat and could still be high in calories and salt. Such promotional information prevents consumers from making the informed decisions that I know the Minister with responsibility for these matters wants them to be able to make. A more transparent and yet still simplified system of nutrition labelling would allow busy shoppers to make quick and informed decisions about the foods that they buy, and enable them to make comparisons with other products and brands.
	The Food Standards Agency action plan on food promotions and children's diets and the public health White Paper Choosing Health endorse the voluntary scheme for giving simplified nutrition information on the front of packaged foods. More than 2,600 consumers were surveyed in June 2005 in one-to-one interviews to test responses to and the general understanding of possible nutrition information formats. The two models that emerged on top were the multiple traffic-light system and colour-coded guideline daily amounts. It appears that the success of those two formats lies in the combination of colour coding and numerical information that makes them both accessible and informative to the busy consumer. It appears that 96 per cent. of the people surveyed thought that simplified packaging would enable them to have better health choices. Ninety per cent. were able correctly to use the traffic-light format to identify the levels of sugar, fat and salt in the products. That is compared with only 69 per cent. for colour coded guideline daily amounts.
	In support of those findings, in the National Consumer Council snap shot survey consumers cited front-of-pack signpost labelling as one of the top three easy methods, alongside healthier school meals, that would help people eat more healthily and would help companies to cut down on salt, sugar and fat in processed foods.
	Furthermore, there is research such as that undertaken by the consumer magazine,  Which?, which I applaud. It shows that a multiple traffic-light labelling format was the preferred option for the majority of consumers and the most easily accessible system for low-income people and those from minority ethnic backgrounds.
	There is an inherent danger in labelling some foods as being healthy, with other foods in contrast being regarded as unhealthy. That gives a wrong impression. Recommendation 23 of the Health Select Committee's report stated that the Government must accept that some foods that are extremely energy dense should be eaten in moderation by most people. It therefore recommends that legislation should be introduced to introduce a traffic-light system for labelling foods either red for high energy density, amber for medium energy density or green for low energy density, according to criteria devised by the FSA.
	Recommendation 24 says that although several interventions for better food nutrition labelling have been made, the traffic-light system stands up to objective assessment, and if accepted widely across the industry would be a good measure of the impact of shifts in consumption across supermarkets and brands from relatively unhealthy to healthier food products.
	I regret that a number of companies seem not to support that recommendation, in contrast to leading supermarkets such as Sainsbury's and Waitrose. All Members have received a letter from Danone, Kellogg's, Kraft, Nestl and PepsiCo, which want to go for the guideline daily amounts information labelling. I think that they are wrong in that regard and I wonder why they are taking that stance. Their approach is in contrast to the Health Select Committee report, the Government's recommendation and the FSA's report. The FSA believes that a consistent approach to food labelling will make it easier for consumers to eat more healthily and encourage consumers to look for and demand healthier food products, and incentivise businesses to produce foods that are lower in salt, sugar and fat content. I regret, for instance, that Tesco has gone ahead and done its own thing, which I believe is not in the public interest. I applaud the way in which Sainsbury's supermarkets have introduced their own multiple traffic-light scheme, or wheel of health , which works on the principle of the FSA guidelines. Those symbols are now printed on the front packaging of more than 2,100 Sainsbury products, including and expanding on the recommendation list of items included by the FSA. Research that has been undertaken by Sainsbury's found that the wheel of health had influenced the purchasing decisions of consumers.
	Regulations on food labelling standards are currently set at a European level. The proliferation of different formats of simplified nutrition labels is a concern for consumers and the food manufacturers and retail industries alike. On 12 July the European consumers organisation presented the European Commission with the conclusions of a multi-stakeholder discussion group that included representatives from national Governments, industry, retailers and academics. I certainly support those conclusions.
	The FSA, supported by the National Consumers Council,  Which? and the Health Committee, recommends that industry-wide adoption of the single front-of-pack signposting scheme should be voluntary, but it would be in favour of mandatory take-up should this initial approach fail. Should a voluntary scheme fail to find unanimity among retailers and manufacturers, I urge the Government to step in to ensure an end to consumer confusion over nutrition labelling. I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. David Amess, Dr. Richard Taylor, Mr. Ronnie Campbell, Sandra Gidley, Dr. Howard Stoate, Bob Russell, Jim Dowd, Charlotte Atkins, David Taylor, Mike Penning, Jeremy Corbyn and Dr. Doug Naysmith.

Food Labelling

Mr. David Amess accordingly presented a Bill to introduce a uniform system for the labelling of food and drinks retailed in England and Wales to show the quantity of salt, sugar and fats they contain; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 20 October, and to be printed [Bill 216].

HEALTH BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 3)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(6) (programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Health Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 29th November 2005 and 14th February 2006 (Health Bill (Programme) and Health Bill (Programme) (No. 2)):
	 Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement at this day's sitting.
	 Subsequent stages
	2. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	3. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement. [Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	 Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day

Health Bill

Lords amendments considered.[Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.]

Clause 3
	  
	Smoke-free premises: exemptions

Lords amendment: No. 1

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 12 and 36.

Caroline Flint: I beg to move, That the House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
	I thank their lordships, particularly my noble Friend Lord Warner, for their hard work on the Bill since it left this House. The modest changes before us now, which are the result of the constructive and collaborative approach taken in the other place, have improved the Bill, and I am therefore delighted to be able to accept all the Lords amendments today.
	The legislation shifts the balance significantly in favour of smoke-free environments. Virtually all enclosed public places and workplaces will be completely smoke free by summer 2007. It will introduce new laws to enforce higher hygiene standards in the NHS and clearly strengthen clinical governance arrangements in light of the findings of the Shipman inquiry. Those are three important health manifesto commitments.

David Taylor: My hon. Friend refers to the summer of next year. Could she be a little more specific? An appropriate day would be 31 May, as the Minister is aware. Is that a day that finds favour with her?

Caroline Flint: I will not commit to any particular date at this stage, but we are having discussions with stakeholders about the countdown to the introduction of the legislation, and I hope to report back on the exact date in the autumn. We are working on that at the moment. As I have said previously, we felt that a date in the warmer weather might be more conducive to a ready compliance with the legislation, as and when it comes into effect.

Steve Webb: I am in close contact with my local authority, South Gloucestershire, which is a great enthusiast for the smoking ban, but is also anxious that it will have inadequate notice of when everything will happen, so it would like a definite date as soon as possible. It also wants to know that it will have the resources to enforce the ban. Can the Minister assure us that local authorities will not be finding money out of their already very cash-strapped coffers to subsidise the enforcement of the ban?

Caroline Flint: Officials are already meeting representatives of the Local Government Association and there are others who have asked some questions about the planning for next year. We will clearly try to commit to a date as soon as possible. We are also having discussions about a range of other issues, including enforcement, and the Bill provides for the need to finance and support local enforcement. It has been incredibly encouraging to learn from both the Irish and the Scottish experience and from my recent visit to New York, that on one level little punitive enforcement has been necessary, although there will clearly be issues for those working in this area, and that will be part of our discussions in the months ahead.

Andrew Murrison: I am grateful to the Minister for yesterday's publication of the draft regulations. The trade is concerned whether it will have sufficient time to make the necessary adaptations. Will she assure the House that the definitive regulations will have a sufficient lead-in time, so that small businesses can make the necessary adaptations without suffering competitive disadvantage?

Caroline Flint: I hope to ensure that we get the regulations right. The regulations that we published yesterday are the result of considerable discussions with many different stakeholders. Obviously, issues will arise in the consultation, but we hope that the regulations give clear guidance to small and medium-sized organisations on how best to meet the requirements of the legislation.
	I remind the House that the experience of how the law is enforced and how businesses have applied the legislation in Ireland and Scotland will help us in England and Wales. The latest information from Scotland indicates that sales have not gone down as a consequence of smoke-free legislation.

David Taylor: I have read the draft regulations, which are a fair stab at creating a workable set of regulations to move the legislation forward. The consultation will finish towards the end of the summer recess, on 2 October. Will the Minister say whether she would consider suggestions that might arise very soon after Parliament reconvenes on 9 October, if a debate were sought from Mr. Speaker? Will she give such an assurance at this stage?

Caroline Flint: Obviously, I cannot control parliamentary time, but I am happy to provide all hon. Members with an indication of how the discussions proceeded in the consultation. There is a wonderful opportunity for hon. Members and local groups and organisations to participate in both a health opportunity and the countdown to smoke-free England in 2007, which I hope will have a fun element.
	This group of amendments includes all the changes to the smoke-free provisions made in the other place. Amendments Nos. 1, 5 and 10 are all minor drafting amendments. Amendment No. 1 corrects a minor drafting inaccuracystrictly speaking, licensees do not authorise the consumption of alcohol; they authorise the sale of alcohol for consumption. Amendments Nos. 5 and 10 were introduced by Earl Howe, who felt that the clarity of the drafting could be improved. We saw no reason to object to his suggested wording in the other place, and we are equally happy to support it here.
	Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 and 11 relate to exemptions in regulations for those participating as performers in a performance in which artistic integrity makes it appropriate for performers to smoke. In Committee, I provided reassurances that the Government were minded to make an exemption for artistic performances, but the detail, as with all proposed exemptions, is a matter for the regulations.
	During the Bill's passage through the other place, we realised that it would not be possible to rely on the general power in clause 3(1) to make such an exemption in all circumstances. The prohibition on making any exemptions for licensed premises in clause 3(3), which was introduced following a free vote on Report, would have prevented any exemptions for artistic performances in licensed premises. As we are aware, many theatres and other performance spaces carry out their activities under only one licence, which is likely to cover not only the whole of the premises, but alcohol sales and theatrical performances. In those circumstances, we realised that the prohibition in subsection (3) came into playin other words, it would be unlawful to make an exemption.
	We introduced amendment No. 2 in the other place in order to relax that prohibition so far as is necessary to allow certain performers to smoke during a performance in all possible venues. The amendment also ensures that the exemption can be applied only to the relevant performer or performers. Of course, the detail of the exemption will still be a matter for regulations. The consultation on the draft regulations that was launched yesterday specifically asked for views on the exemption proposed for performers, particularly concerning whether the arrangements are adequate to prevent the development of loopholes.

David Taylor: This morning, the all-party group on smoking and health, which I have the privilege of chairing, discussed this aspect of the regulations and sought assurances on whether the exclusion would refer to rehearsals of the performance as opposed to the performance itself. Can the Minister reassure us on that particular point?

Caroline Flint: Through amendment No. 3, we have left the door open on exempting rehearsals, as we are still yet to be persuaded. We must not forget that any exemption is for the performer, not the premises, and that the smoker will be facilitated only when it is integral to the plot or storyline. We must be clear that this exemption is not about allowing certain people to smoke freely. From a purely practical point of view, we must ask whether it would be sensible or practical to light up and stub out cigarettes each time the rehearsal of a performance stops and starts. We will seek to clarify that through the consultation. As I said, I have taken note of the experience not only of Ireland and Scotland but of New York and California, which have exemptions in these artistic areas.

Greg Knight: The Minister kindly said that she would contact every Member in respect of this matter, so I presume that she is thinking of writing to us all. When she does so, will she include in that letter her conclusions on the issue of rehearsals following her assessment of any further representations that she may receive?

Caroline Flint: I should like to be able to give a clear indication of the Government's point of view following the consultation, and I will seek to make that as clear as possible for Members through a letter or some other appropriate medium.
	Amendments Nos. 7, 8, 9 and 11 are consequential amendments.
	On amendment No. 4, there was some concern in the other place that the power in clause 4 to make additional places smoke free was rather broad and could be used to make all sorts of places smoke free even where there was no significant risk of exposure to second-hand smoke. Given that we have consistently made it clear that we will use this power only to protect people where there is a significant risk of exposure to second-hand smoke, we had no objections to amendment No. 4, which raised the threshold for its use under the Bill. The amendment means that it would only be possible to make an additional place smoke free where in the authority's opinionthat of the Secretary of State in England and the National Assembly in Wales
	there is a significant risk that, without a designation, persons present there would be exposed to significant quantities of smoke.
	That wording makes it clear that the power cannot be used in cases where exposure to second-hand smoke is unlikely or very limited.
	Amendment No. 36 makes any regulations to make vehicles smoke free under clause 5 subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. That issue was raised in Committee, where I said that I would be inclined to think about it. The Government tabled the amendment following the recommendation made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which noted that the power in clause 5 could potentially be used to make private vehicles smoke free. Although we have absolutely no intention of using the power in that way, the amendment provides further reassurance, as no regulations under the clause can now be made without the prior agreement of Parliament.
	On amendment No. 12, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) for championing this cause and to the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) for doing likewise. Hon. Members may recall that clause 30 was introduced on Report in the Commons, with cross-party support. It gives the Secretary of State the power to raise the minimum age for sales of tobacco products through secondary legislation by the affirmative resolution procedure. When introduced, it specified that the age limit could be changed only to an age not lower than 16 but did not specify an upper age limit.
	Concern was expressed in the other place that the clause could allow the minimum legal age for sales of tobacco products to be raised to 21. Although that has never been our intention, we were happy to table amendment No. 12, which specifies that the minimum age for sales of tobacco products cannot be higher than 18. I am sure that hon. Members know that public consultation on whether to use the power is under way.
	All the amendments in the group have improved the Bill and I commend them to hon. Members.

Andrew Murrison: The Minister must be approaching the last hour of consideration of the Health Bill with much relief. Its passage has occasionally been rocky, but I am happy to say that the rocks have been mostly on the Government side. We recall the present Home Secretary's seminal contribution to the public health debate when he identified smoking as one of the few working-class pleasures, the subsequent discomfiture of the Secretary of State for Health and her handbrake turns on food and non-food pubs and private members' clubs. However, on a consensual note, we are pleased with the Lords amendments and also pleased that the Minister is happy with them. We will not resist them.
	We note yesterday's publication of the draft regulations for smoke-free premises and vehicles, in the nick of time for today's debate, and the incorporation of much good sense, which emerged during the Bill's passage. Much of the latter relates to small matters, such as provision for specialist tobacconists and research and testing facilities. They may be small but they are significant for those who will be affected by the Bill, and we welcome the provision for them.
	However, we remain concerned about the lack of attention paid earlier to enforcement costs, as evidenced by the invitation in the draft regulations to comment on likely costs to enforcement authorities. That has already been mentioned. To work, the Bill needs enforcement, not simply encouragement. Clearly, little provision has been made for how that might be done. That is regrettable.
	The licensed trade has asked for as much notice as possible of the definitive regulations. That is fair and reasonable. I note that the consultation ends on 9 October and hope to revert to what may follow when we discuss amendment No. 37.
	The British Beer and Pub Association has asked for regulations that are easy to understand and simple to apply. The draft regulations are perhaps less monstrous than many but, as ever, the detail contains the potential trip wires. I note the section on signage in the regulations and wonder how we can make such a simple matterwhich surely requires little more than the international no-smoking symbolso complicated.
	Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 deal with smoking and the performing arts. They could properly be called the Howe amendments because my noble Friend Earl Howe is largely responsible for them. I hope that they will ensure that Carmen, the plays of Noel Coward, Simon Gray, John Osborne and most of Ibsen do not have to be rescripted. They are welcome.
	Amendment No. 4 would introduce the test of significant exposure to second-hand smoke. The Minister spoke a little about that but I believe that it is an important amendment. Without it, appropriate national authorities could ban smoking in public in almost any circumstances. I therefore welcome the amendment. It is self-evidently wrong to ban an activity if the relevant substance is not significant. With a sensible understanding of enclosed and substantially enclosedwhich, we hope, will emerge from the draft regulationsthe amendment should resolve, for example, the bus stop dilemma that we discussed in Standing Committee.
	We should note that our understanding of significant may alter with time as our appreciation of the health effects of second-hand smoke evolves. Sir Richard Peto's evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee is germane to that.
	We are indebted to my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and the hon. Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) for amendment No. 12, which deals with raising the age for the sale of tobacco. In Committee, they were trenchant supporters of the sensible proposal to raise the age to 18. We await the outcome of the consultation on that with great interest. We cannot raise the age beyond 21 as such a move is proscribed by existing legislation, but I was reassured to hear that the Minister would not wish to do so in any case. That we might have the potential to do so is something of an historical anomaly. We are pleased that the amendment would enable us to raise the age to 18 and no further. That is clearly the correct provision for the 21st century.
	Amendment No. 36 will have the effect of ensuring that regulations applying to smoke-free vehicles must be made under the affirmative resolution procedure. Given the scope for confusion implicit in clause 5, that seems very wise. We still face the conundrum of the long-distance lorry driver, for example. He might use his cab to sleep in at night, but the lorry might occasionally be used by someone else. There is an element of confusion about whether he would be able to smoke in the vehicle, and that needs to be clarified. Bringing the measure before the House under the affirmative resolution procedure will give us the opportunity to explore the issue further.
	Another example that is relevant at this time of year involves farmers in their tractors. Most people would regard a tractor as a fairly well-ventilated vehicle, but under the measure, the farmer would not be able to smoke in it because of the possibility that someone else might use it subsequently. That seems to cut across the sensible notion of significance introduced in amendment No. 4, which we very much welcome. I would be interested to hear how the Minister reconciles the two approaches.

Steve Webb: The principal amendments in this group that I want to discuss are amendment No. 2 and the related ones that deal with smoking in performances and rehearsals. I was astonished to learn that their lordships were attempting to table amendments to cover theatrical performances and rehearsals. My initial reaction was to ask why the actors could not just act. That would surely be a better response. There would be no problem with someone holding a cigarette or having a pipe in their mouththat is not prohibited by the Billas long as there was no smoke coming out of them.
	There was a suggestion in the other place that Churchill could no longer be depicted on stage because he would not be able to have a cigar between his fingers, which would be nonsense, or that Harold Wilson could not be shown because his pipe would be banned. That would be nonsense as well. Surely the whole point of acting is to create an illusion. We do not actually need to see smoke physically coming out of the pipes or cigars. There was also a discussion about whether non-carcinogenic herbal cigarettes could be used instead, as they produce smoke that would not be so bad for people. However, that possibility appears to have been ruled out as well.
	I cannot see why we need this exemption at all. I notice that amendment No. 2 talks about artistic integrity. If I were to go to see a play, and I saw an actor smoking in circumstances that I did not deem necessary to the plot, could I go to the licensing authority or the relevant local authority to protest? Would that authority have a panel of people who had been trained to judge whether the artistic integrity of the play would have been impeded by the presence or absence of a cigarette? It is nonsense to set people up in bureaucratic structures to judge whether in a particular case it was, as young actresses say, necessary to the plot.
	I am reassured that the Minister seems minded not to allow an exemption for rehearsals; otherwise, we could end up in the extraordinary situation in which smoking was permittedalthough only by those characters for whom the integrity of the plot required ituntil the moment at which the director shouted, Cut! At that point, all the cigarettes would quickly have to be stamped out. No one working on the set would be allowed to smoke, but they would be allowed to inhale the smoke from the actor who had just been performing. No one would be able to smoke during the break, but they would be able to breathe in the actor's smoke once the rehearsal started again. Those working on the set would be able to breathe in smoke, but only if it was someone else's.
	One of the beauties of the legislation is that, in most cases, there is no room for doubt. It is clear cut. We are not going to talk about the distance from the bar or about rooms with ventilation. The Minister's argument throughout was for a comprehensive ban with as few exemptions as possible so that people would know where they stood and self-enforcement would be easier. Yet here we are with this peculiar luvvies' amendment. I wonder what is behind it.

David Taylor: I said a moment ago that I thought that this was a pretty fair stab at a set of regulations. Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that there are areas that might be further improved, not least those relating to sports stadiums and railway stations, many of which are not yet within the remit of the regulations, even though substantial numbers of people have a significant risk of being exposed to large amounts of smoke in those places?

Steve Webb: I certainly agree that there are still some grey areas, and my point about this artistic integrity exemption is that it creates more grey areas. I have stoodthat shows how long ago it wasat football matches and been absolutely choked by cigarette smoke, albeit only for 90 minutes, so one would have to make a judgment about the long-term harm that it was doing to me. What we need above all is clarity. People need to know where they stand, and what is lawful and what is not. My worry about these amendments is that we are introducing new loopholes and ambiguities, and all because of something that could be perfectly well avoided by other means.

Andrew Murrison: How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile his philistine attitude towards these amendments with his party's liberal attitude to the smoking of cannabis?

Steve Webb: No discussion on the Health Bill would be complete with the hon. Gentleman trying to bring cannabis into it. He seems to be fixated on itI do not know whether there is anything that he would like to declare at this point.
	Amendment No. 3 would allow the regulations to include rehearsals. Perhaps the Minister will regard this as a formal response to her formal consultation on the regulations: please do not include rehearsals. Whereas performances are a limited number of occurrences, allowing smoking during a long run of rehearsals would be potentially much more detrimental to the people who support the rehearsal process.
	Amendment No. 12 deals with not raising beyond 18 the age of sale for cigarettes. We welcome that. Going beyond 18 would raise a much wider set of issues because there are many other things for which 18 is a trigger age, and it would not be satisfactory to try to change that by regulation.
	The House is, as you can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, gripped by this set of amendments. It is tempting to test the view of the House on them, but I do not sense that we would get very far, so I probably will not pursue the matter. However, I would be interested to hear the Minister's comment on enforcement. Amendment No. 2 refers to artistic integrity. Who will judge that, and how will they be trained to do so?

Caroline Flint: In considering the exemption, which can be very tightly drawn, I had to consider what was sensible and how to act in proportion to the risk involved. Different places have approached the matter in different ways. Our exemption mirrors that in California's smoke-free legislation, which has been held up as a shining example many times during our discussions. I also touched on the matter when I was in New York recently, as it concerns theatres there.
	Hon. Members have asked who will decide what is integral to the plot or storyline. It will be for the performers and the management of the theatre or premises to satisfy themselves that smoking is an integral part of the artistic performance. Objections can be made to the enforcement authority, which will then investigate the matter and decide whether it wants to press the case. Ultimately, it is for the courts to decide whether smoking can rightly be considered an integral part of the artistic performance. We must not forget that the management of a theatre will want to be convinced that smoking is integral. They are, after all, responsible, by virtue of clause 8, for ensuring that smoking does not take place inappropriately. Other jurisdictions have found that they are able to enforce such legislation, but the consultation process will give us an opportunity to explore the matter further.

Sandra Gidley: I am a little unsure as to whether the amendment would cover school plays. Would they be covered by the age rule, or would the amendment create an exemption to allow children under 16 to smoke?

Caroline Flint: In relation to that tortuous description, I shall look at the  Hansard. Clearly, children under 16 are not allowed to smoke, so a potential offence would be committed in encouraging them to smoke. We have to grow up a bit about this. We must be realistic, and not forget that the few exemptions in the legislation sit alongside a real culture change in England, which is to be welcomed. Therefore, we must consider where we can have most effect, and the Bill amply provides for that.

David Taylor: To assist my hon. Friend, I am pretty certain that theatrical cigarettes are available that do not contain carcinogenic materials and would not be caught by the Bill in any way.

Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend makes a helpful point, and I should correct myself, because it is not an offence to smoke under the age of 16, but to sell cigarettes to those under 16. Given the number of schools that have healthy schools policies, however, I do not think that a single head teacher in the land would encourage smoking [Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) says from a sedentary position, the tabloids would have them if they did. We will have an opportunity to explore the issue further in the consultation.
	The point raised by the hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) about vehicles was explored in some depth in Committee. To protect the health of workers, the cabs of lorries will be smoke free unless they are for the sole use of the driver. I remind the House that, in response to the consultation last summer, the Road Haulage Association advised that most of its members have smoking policies that prohibit smoking in shared vehicles, and had no objections to the main aim of the policy. I have listened to the House, and the issue has been explored further in the other place. I will ensure that matters relating to vehicles will be subject to affirmative resolution.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 12 agreed to.

Clause 14
	  
	Code of practice relating to health care associated infections

Lords amendment: No. 13.

Caroline Flint: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 14 to 22, 24, 26 to 28, 35 and 37 to 58.

Caroline Flint: This is simply a group of minor drafting and technical amendments.
	Although amendments Nos. 13 to 15 are technical drafting amendments, they are important nevertheless, as they alter the definition of health care associated infection in the Bill and relate to the scope of the code of practice. It has always been the policy intention that the code can include requirements concerning infections that are caused or exacerbated by organisms already present on or in a patient's body at the time of their entry into the health care environment. An example would be bacteria that are already present on a patient's skin at the time of their admission to hospital and that infect a patient during or after surgery.
	We had thought that the definition used by the Health Bill included such infections, so that the Secretary of State would have been able to include requirements relating to them in the code of practice. However, on further reflection in the other place, we realised that the definition used was capable of another interpretation that excluded infections caused by bacteria present on the patient's skin which subsequently infected the patient as a result of the provision of health care. Such an interpretation would have meant that requirements relating to the prevention and control of those infections would have been outside the scope of the code of practice.
	We therefore brought forward Lords amendments Nos. 13 to 15 to make sure that infections arising from micro-organisms present on or in the patient's body prior to the person's entry into the health care system are included in the definition of health care associated infection used by the Bill.

Andrew Murrison: Although these are described as minor and drafting amendments, they are, as the Minister said, quite important. I believe that Lords amendments Nos. 13, 14 and 15 were inspired by the Royal College of Nursing. They rightly recognise that organisms already present on a person but not doing any harm can become opportunistic pathogens in a health-care environment.
	We await the electronic code of practice on the control of health care-associated infections. It would be interesting if at some point the Minister could update us on where it is. The British Medical Association managed to publish its code in February of this year.

Caroline Flint: I am happy to update the hon. Gentleman on where the code of practice is, but first let me respond to what he said about Lords amendment No 37. The amendment commences all regulation-making powers on Royal Assent, and speeds up our ability to lay the regulations by removing any need for us to lay separate commencement orders switching on the powers. That does not allow us to do anything that we could not already do via an alternative route. The alternative route was laying individual commencement orders to switch on regulation-making powers. We felt that that was too bureaucratic, and that commencing the orders automatically on Royal Assent was much more sensible.
	We have made the code of practice available throughout the Bill's passage. The last version, a near-final draft, was placed in the House of Commons Library back in February. We will publish a final draft shortly, before the provisions are brought into force. However, the provisions will not be implemented until at least two months after the Bill receives Royal Assent.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 14 to 22 agreed to.

Clause 19
	  
	Controlled drugs: power to enter and inspect

Lords amendment: No. 23.

Caroline Flint: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment No. 25.

Caroline Flint: The Government tabled Lords amendments Nos. 23 and 25 to meet concerns raised in the Grand Committee in the other place about the authorised persons who can enter and inspect an individual's private home in relation to securing the safe, appropriate and effective management of controlled drugs.
	Lords amendment No. 23 limits when an authorised person for the purposes of clause 19 can enter relevant premises which are or form part of a private dwelling. It ensures that an authorised person may enter such premises only if he or she is accompanied by a constable, or in such other circumstances as may be prescribed by regulations. Lords amendment No. 25 is purely consequential.
	Lords amendment No. 23 contains a power to prescribe circumstances in regulations in which an authorised person will not need to be accompanied by a constable. That is simply to ensure that if, for example, a medical practitioner's surgery is separate from his or her private dwelling but access has to be through the private dwellingfor instance, it may be on the ground floor of a block of flats with a shared hallway, in which case it will be a private spaceit will be possible not to require the presence of a constable.
	It will also be appropriate to use the power to exclude care homes from the requirement. While they can properly be classed as private dwellings because they are already inspected by the Commission for Social Care Inspection, it would seem illogical to require the presence of a constable in those specific circumstances.

Andrew Murrison: My noble Friend Earl Howe and my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) argued that authorised persons entering a private dwelling under the provisions of part 3 should be accompanied by a police constable, and we are pleased that the Government agree with that sensible suggestion. The power of entry will of course be exercised very rarely, but Conservative Members regard such incursions as quite grave and serious, and we welcome the safeguard that the amendments will provide. We also note the protection that they may give authorised persons, and the evidential benefits that may accrue.
	I was going to quiz the Minister on what circumstances she might have in mind in providing the possibility of exemptions to the sensible provisions that she has described, but she has given two good examples. With that in mind, I support Lords amendment No. 23. I hope that it will provide the safeguards that we have sought in Committee and in the other place.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 24 to 28 agreed to.

Clause 48
	  
	Code of practice relating to delegated functions

Lords amendment: No. 29.

Caroline Flint: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 30 to 34.

Caroline Flint: These amendments all relate to the disclosure of information obtained through the use of the powers set out in part 4, chapter 3, which deals with the protection of the NHS from fraud and other unlawful activities. Clause 50 provides special protection for information obtained from personal records, from which the identity of the individual that they are about can be ascertained. An Opposition amendment tabled in Grand Committee in the other place aimed to make it absolutely certain that any personal information was not disclosed to any person in respect of whom it was not necessary to disclose it. That was always our policy intention, but the amendment gave us pause for thought and Earl Howe, who tabled the amendment, graciously withdrew it in order to allow us time to think whether there was anything further that we needed to do to ensure that this important policy objective was met.
	The result of our deliberations are the Lords amendments in the group. Although they look fairly complex, they do nothing more than put tighter safeguards around the disclosure of personal information. The amendments were welcomed in the other place, so unless Members are keen to hear the detailed explanations for each amendment in turn, which I am more than happy to give, I will stop there.

Andrew Murrison: I have left the Minister plenty of time. If she would like to explain the details further, she should feel free to do so. I am pleased that the Government have assimilated the concerns about the disclosure of personal information that were expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) in Committee and by my noble Friend Earl Howe in the other place. On that consensual note, I welcome this set of Lords amendments, but I would like some indication of when we can expect to see the code of practice relating to disclosure, heralded by clause 48 as amended by this group. Clearly, it must be produced swiftly in order to give advance information to those who may have to disclose or handle information in accordance with the Bill.

Caroline Flint: I have taken note of the hon. Gentleman's points and I am happy to look further into them and to provide more information about the code of practice.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Remaining Lords amendments agreed to.

GOVERNMENT OF WALES BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 3)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(6),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Government of Wales Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 9th January and 27th February 2006 (Government of Wales Bill (Programme) and Government of Wales Bill (Programme) (No. 2)):
	 Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement at this day's sitting.
	2. The Lords Amendments shall be considered in the following order, namely: 3, 17, 21, 22, 18, 4 to 9, 19, 20, 16, 1, 2, 10 to 15 and 23 to 102.
	 Subsequent stages
	3. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	4. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement. [Mr. Watts.]
	 Question agreed to.

Government of Wales Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 7
	  
	Candidates at general elections

Lords amendment: No. 3.

Peter Hain: I assume that the programme motion has been moved, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Moved and agreed.

Peter Hain: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
	I believe that the package of amendments that we present today forms the basis of a cross-party consensus to achieve Royal Assent before the summer. The Government have listened to debates in this House and particularly in the House of Lords, where some major amendments were tabled. We have sought agreement and I believe that we now have that on the composition of Assembly Committees. The d'Hondt formula is now, instead of being up front, very much a fall-back option and on the back burner. It is there if needed, but we hope that it will not be needed. We have also made concessions on the name of the audit committee and, importantly for all Opposition parties andfrankly speakingfor ourselves, on the membership of the Assembly commission.
	The debate on the details of the Bill has been had, and I hope that the Conservatives will now join the other parties in Wales to make the new powers work, and not pursue old arguments. I thought that it was very apt of the former Plaid Cymru leader, Dafydd Wigley, to have told the  Western Mail yesterday:
	I hope both sides can give and take. To prepare for what happens after next May, it is extremely important that the Bill gets through before the recess.
	That is indeed important. There are important preparations to be made for the election and many orders to be laid in respect of the new internal architecture of the Assembly. The Assembly officials and others want to get on with that and, therefore, Royal Assent by next Tuesday is very important.
	After that brief introduction, I shall now address the amendments specifically. I realise that the ban on dual candidacy is contentious with all Opposition parties, but it is a manifesto commitment. Our 2005 general election manifesto stated that we would
	prevent candidates from standing on both the list and in a constituency in order to make all candidates genuinely accountable to the electorate and to end Assembly Members being elected via the backdoor even when they have already been rejected by voters.
	That is a clear commitment from a manifesto that we took to the country in May last year and on the basis of which we won a resounding victory, certainly in Wales and also in the rest of the country. It is a measure that this House considered at length and supported by a considerable majority earlier this year.
	The proposals in clause 7 of the Bill, as originally drafted, will strengthen the integrity of the Assembly's electoral system and the legitimacy of regional Assembly Members. They will put the voters in charge by enabling them to reject a candidate who can currently get in through the back door despite being rejected by the voters in a constituency.
	I appreciate that this issue has aroused strong feelings on both sides of the House and concerns have been expressed, but I wish to draw the attention of the House to the views of Lord Elis-Thomas the Presiding Officer of the Assembly since its establishment in 1999 and Plaid Cymru's former parliamentary leader. When asked recently by the BBC about his views on the dual candidacy ban, he said:
	every party has selected under the system which is in the Bill and that, to me, signals a bit of an hypocrisy to carry on fighting old battles, I find that quite boring. So my main battle now is to try and get the structure of the National Assembly under the new constitution and new bill in place for 2007 because I don't want people wasting time, whoever the Government is after 2007, by not being able to get things done.
	He added that
	the debate and the arguments have been lost.
	That is a significant statement. He continued:
	The politics has been lost. What I'm saying is that the big picture now is to get the Assembly established, and a new constitution, because what we have to do is to make it clear to the people of Wales that we have a new democratic opportunity. That is the most important way to challenge the Labour Party or any other party.
	I would be the first to admit that I have not always agreed with the views of Lord Elis-Thomas in the pastand I do not necessarily agree with every word of that quotation but I believe that on this occasion he was speaking with the best interests of the National Assembly and of Wales at heart. He was speaking in a non-partisan way. I know that he was not a supporter of the ban on dual candidacy, but he has moved on and it is important that the House also moves on.

Albert Owen: I agree entirely with what the Secretary of State said about the manifesto commitment and the fact that we are talking about something that the House of Commons has passed on numerous occasions. Does he agree that Lord Elis-Thomas is, of course, a member of the House of Lords and that he accepts, and his party accepts, in the House of Lords, that the supremacy remains in this Chamber and in the House of Commons?

Peter Hain: Indeed, although I am not seeking to deny that there have been real improvements to the Bill as a result of debates and arguments in the Lords and the amendments that have been moved there. There has been a constructive exchange, which has partly resulted in some of the important compromises that we have offerednot on dual candidacy, because that is a manifesto commitment. In line with the Salisbury convention, I hope that the House of Lords will respect that, because it is fundamental to the Bill and to the integrity of a new electoral system for the Assembly.
	Lord Elis-Thomas knows better than many the work and the preparation that needs to be done to enable the Assembly to make a smooth transition next May to the new arrangements, with a separate Executive and legislature. He does not want that essential work to be delayed by arguments over what his fellow Assembly Member, the Liberal Democrat Peter Black, has described as a
	distraction from the real issues in the Bill.
	The real issues in the Bill are, of course, primarily concerned with giving extra powers to the Assembly and also with making sure that it acts as a proper legislature with an Executive who are accountable to that legislaturerather than a rather amorphous corporate body that has not really stood the test of time.
	Royal Assent before the recess is vital and I am grateful that the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) have recognised the importance of that. The key immovable deadline that we face is the Assembly elections next May. Considerable consequential work is needed following Royal Assent and before the purdah period before the elections. That includes elections and disqualification orders, which need to be made in good time to set out clearly the basis on which all parties and candidates need to organise themselves and to allow adequate time for proper consultation with the Electoral Commission. The Bill includes a power for the Assembly to promote participation in and awareness of the electionsmeeting an Electoral Commission recommendation. Clearly, there has got to be sufficient time for that.
	Schedule 7 outlines the Assembly's ability to make primary legislation if there were to be a successful referendum. A key commitment is to fine-tune that and to bring forward an amendment order to ensure that it is complete and accurate before the elections next May so that everybody is clear about the new footing on which the Assembly will start. A considerable number of further orders are requiredabout 14many of which are fundamental to the separation and include provisions for financing and staffing arrangements. They are critical when it comes to delivering the policy in the Bill, and have to be completed in good time before the next elections.
	I hope that I have not taken too many liberties in explaining to the House the importance of getting Royal Assent by next Tuesday. If devolution is to continue to be a success, and the Assembly to help to improve the quality of people's lives in Wales, we need to move onto go forward, not back. I urge Members to reject the Lords amendment and to disagree with the Lords on this matter.

Cheryl Gillan: First, may I welcome the Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box? It may be the hottest day of the year both here and in Wales, but he always looks as though he has been out in the sun rather a lot when he comes to the House to grace us with his presence, so it is obviously weather that he enjoys.

Peter Hain: Having a permatan does not prevent one from getting a cold.

Cheryl Gillan: The Secretary of State took the words out of my mouth. He appears to be suffering. I am sorry that he is having so much aggravation with his legislation, both here and in another place. Of course, it is not just this Bill that he is having a little local difficulty with. I understand that there are negotiations on the Northern Ireland legislation, which must be preoccupying him a great deal. We all sympathised with him earlier in the year when he had to pull the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill. It must always cause a great deal of difficulty in the office of the Secretary of State when legislation has to be withdrawn.  [ Interruption. ] It was a pleasure to withdraw that piece of legislationgood, I am glad to hear that. We might be able to agree on that, but there is no doubt that we are not going to reach an agreement on dual candidacy. Notwithstanding any backroom deals that might have been done with other parties, we will continue to register our objections by opposing the provisions in principle. I think neither that the matter is boring, nor that it is something that we can just ignore.
	It was always apparent from the way in which this aspect of the Bill was approached that a deal had been doneit was a deal between Cardiff and Whitehallto keep Labour Assembly Members happy and dilute what they perceived to be real competition. In truth, it is competition that Labour Assembly Members cannot stand. The Secretary of State is quite right that various justificatory arguments for changing the electoral arrangements in Wales have been laid out by him, the Under-Secretary and Lord Davies of Oldham. However, it is worth having a look at them because I would not want to admit for one moment that the argument is lost. I think rather that the argument has been won, but that the Government have rolled on regardless.
	First, we were told that the provision was a manifesto commitment. A manifesto commitment is a statement of intent, or even a wish. A party that was faced with the need to cling on to power by forming an alliance with another partythe Liberal Democrats, for examplewould need to compromise on its manifesto commitments. Indeed, I believe that that has happened in Scotland.
	The Labour party in Wales does not even need to enter into a coalition to give up on its manifesto commitments. Page 5 of its 2003 manifesto, Working together for Wales, said that in the next Welsh Assembly term Labour would
	Scrap Home Care charges for disabled people.
	However, on 15 February 2006, Dr. Gibbons, the Labour Minister for Health and Social Services, said:
	in view of all that we now know, it is clear that we cannot put in place our original plans equitably and affordably.
	There we have a manifesto commitment that was easily put aside.
	That was not even a one-off. Ambitions for Wales, the Labour party's 2001 manifesto document, said:
	We will not introduce 'top-up' fees and have legislated to prevent them.
	Of course, Labour broke that manifesto promise. It was only the Conservatives who forced the Labour party to remove those charges from Welsh students attending Welsh universities. The claim that manifesto pledges cannot be broken really does not hold water as a cohesive argument. Such pledges can be broken when it suits the Labour party.
	Secondly, we are told that the system is confusing to the electorate and that we do not want losers to become winners. What nonsense is that? If the Labour party does not want losers to become winners, why has it admitted Baroness Jones of Whitchurch to the House of Lords today? If I remember correctly, she was the losing candidate in the Blaenau Gwent constituency in the general election. Labour Members say that they want losers to be losers and not to become winners, but I am afraid that that rings pretty hollow today. If the Labour party did not want losers to become winners, why did it introduce a list system at all? On the death or resignation of a sitting Member, the next person on the listmost arguably a loserautomatically moves into an elected position. The claim is paramount nonsense.
	The electorate are confused not about dual candidacy provisions, but about the multiplicity of the voting systems that the Labour Government have introduced since 1997. We have the supplementary vote system for the London mayoral election, the proportional representation list system for European electionsexcept in Northern Ireland, where there is a different systemand indeed the single transferable vote system in Northern Ireland. I do not think that I need to go on. The multiplicity of the systems is confusing voters who have been used to first past the post. However, another change is proposed for Wales after only a short time.
	What is the basis for the change? If it were based on fact, investigation, consultation or popular demand, I could understand it, but that is not the case. The only research that has been prayed in aid of the change is that of the Bevan Foundation. Despite the foundation's excellent credentials, that work was hardly its finest piece of research. Such a small, isolated, Labour-purchased report should hardly form the basis for electoral change. I have to tell the Secretary of State that I have received no letters from people demanding a change. I have heard no public outcry and have received no letters supporting the changes that he wants to make.

Wayne David: rose

Cheryl Gillan: I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman who sponsored the research.

Wayne David: The hon. Lady has questioned the objective credentials of the Bevan Foundation on numerous occasions, but does she agree that it is significant that the Leader of the Opposition has contributed to its current review?

Cheryl Gillan: I was not casting aspersions on the Bevan FoundationI was just saying that I doubt that it is happy, either with that small, imperfect piece of research or for it to be cited as the sole support for electoral change in Wales. The foundation has some excellent credentials, but that research is slightly lacking in my view and, I believe, in the hon. Gentleman's view, given his admission.
	To justify the changes, the Secretary of State said that there is widespread, systematic abuse by regional Assembly Members. I have challenged him to produce evidence, as has Nick Bourne, the leader of the Conservative group in the Assembly. In a debate on this subject on 27 February, I asked the Secretary of State whether he had replied to letters that Nick Bourne had sent him on 4 November and 27 January. Since then, another letter was sent on 20 March. Of course, there is no evidence of abuse, which is why, I assume, the Secretary of State has not had the courtesy to respond to those letters. I am happy to give way to him if he would like to explain why he has not done so. Those letters are perfectly politeif he would like to look at them, I have copies with me. It appears, however, that the allegations of abuse are another fabrication to try to justify the self-serving provision in the Bill.
	There is a great deal of opinion against the introduction of such a system, which operates successfully only in Ukraine. The Electoral Commission was not convinced of the need for change. In its submission to the Welsh Affairs Committee, it concluded:
	In light of the need to encourage voter participation at the Assembly election in 2007, we would caution against any change that is perceived to be partisan and could add to a prevailing distrust of politicians.
	On the evidence available to the Commission...we do not believe that the case for change has been made out.
	The Electoral Society Reform said:
	We urge the Government to reconsider their proposal to ban dual candidacy, a controversial and divisive argument for which the case has not been adequately made.
	During the Bill's passage through the House, we heard from the Arbuthnott Commission which, after 18 months of deliberation and discussion, following the submission of evidence, including verbal evidence, from a range of bodies and elected representatives at all levels, concluded that there was no evidence that dual candidacy was problematic for voters. Professor Sir John Arbuthnott said:
	Banning dual candidacy would, if you think about it, actually restrict voter choice and potentially diminish the quality of constituency contests.
	The commission concluded that there was no case for change in Scotland, and there are no plans to introduce the system there. If it is not good enough for Scotland, why is it good enough for Wales? The Government have neither consulted on, nor examined, the changes in a responsible or thorough fashion. Indeed, in the 2006 annual report by the Wales Office, the Secretary of State said:
	The third commitment was to prevent candidates from standing on both the list and in a constituency in order to make all candidates genuinely accountable to the electorate. The Government believes that following two Assembly elections and experience of the Additional Members System there was a need to modify the system to prevent candidates from standing simultaneously in a constituency and on the regional list.
	I assume that the reference to making all candidates genuinely accountable means that serving Assembly Members are not genuinely accountable. It means, too, that none of the list Members in Scotland, either before or after the next election for the Scottish Parliament, are genuinely accountable.
	The Secretary of State is suggesting that there are two classes of Assembly Member. That is absolute rubbish, and it is not worth the paper it is written on. As I said, the Government have not consulted or examined the changes to the electoral system, or sought consensus. They have not respected the principles of the original devolution settlement in Wales but, as usual, they do things in Wales that suit Labour party politics. I will not support that course of action, so I urge my hon. Friends to agree with the Lords amendment and oppose the Government motion in the Lobby.

Paul Murphy: I apologise for being a little late for our debate.
	The Assembly elections will be held in about 10 months' time. The Assembly has done many good things for the people of Wales, but I believe that turnout will be low, which is unfortunate for Wales and for democracy. One problem is that voting in elections is affected by the enormous publicity created by the media. Even at the general election, turnout was reduced. The great bulk of the Bill that we have discussed in recent months will not excite the people of Wales to increase turnout. People vote when their lives are directly affected by an issue, whether it is the health service, schools or local government. Constitutional issues are interesting for politicians, but I am not convinced that the people who elected me are as excited about them as we are in the Chamber.
	I do not understand for one second the reasoning of the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) on our manifesto commitment. She cited an Assembly manifesto commitment, but it was not an Assembly commitment, but a manifesto commitment made by Welsh Members who stood for parliamentary election to the House of Commons. She said that we should not break our manifesto commitments, and reeled off a list of accusations, but she went on to suggest that we should break that commitment. That is nonsense.

David Davies: The right hon. Gentleman is far wiser and has more experience of the House than I, but according to that argument, during the 18 years in which the Conservatives held sway, he would not have dared to question anything that we included in our manifesto. If we did not question things in manifestos there would not be much point in our coming to the House.

Paul Murphy: I do not question the fact that Opposition parties should debate the manifesto of the winning party, but there comes a time when the upper House has to acknowledge that manifesto. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to the Salisbury convention, and our manifesto could not have made the position clearer. We wanted to change the rules on the Assembly, and people voted on that change. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham raised the issue of consultationof course, those matters were discussed at the general election, and were extremely prominent in the run-up to that election. There was a party conference in Wales and those matters were discussed by newspapers and television companieswhatever their views on them.
	The hon. Lady represents an English constituency, so she would not know about these things. However, when we travelled around our constituencies, we talked about those commitments, one of which was on the need to prevent the daft nonsense of dual candidacy. I would have gone much further than the Secretary of State in changing the electoral system in Wales, but that is an issue for another day. The hon. Lady is entirely right that the daft system for electing people to the European Parliament ought to be changed. The link between a Member of Parliament and the constituents whom they represent in the House of Commons is a jewel in the crown of our democracy. The added list needs to be looked at, but for all sorts of reasons we are not in a position to do that yet. At present we are abiding by that significant, obvious manifesto commitment to change the rules on dual candidacy.

Lembit �pik: The right hon. Gentleman cites as the core element of his argument the rule that a manifesto commitment must not be broken. Can he confirm that he thinks it was utterly unacceptable for the Government to break their highly publicised manifesto commitment in 2001 not to introduce tuition top-up fees? The question is relevant, because there is no consistency in what the right hon. Gentleman claims his Government should do, and what the Government have done with regard to manifesto commitments.

Paul Murphy: I agree with what the manifesto stated about these issues. The hon. Gentleman and I argued about this some months ago in this place. It is not relevant to what we are discussing. What is relevant is that the House of Lords debated the matter, made the arguments clear and voted accordingly. The matter has come back to the House of Commons and it is now up to Labour Members to honour those manifesto commitments and to ensure that what the people of Wales clearly voted for is honoured by the Government.

Cheryl Gillan: The right hon. Gentleman protests too much about the Salisbury convention. Although the Liberal Democrats voted with us in the other place to produce the amendment that is presented for the House's scrutiny, and the vote was won by 133 to 114, I understand that a deal has been done with the Liberal Democrats whereby they will not challenge the House's decision in the other place, so they will not stand alongside us on a point of principle. Quoting the Salisbury convention is therefore almost pointless. Once a deal like that has been done, if the Liberal Democrats cannot stick to their guns, the Government will get their business.

Paul Murphy: I did deals myself when I was Secretary of State for Wales, but that is another story. Whatever the situation, the House of Commons must recognise that the people of Wales voted on the matter and we must honour that.

Lembit �pik: I am delighted to hear that both the Conservatives and the Labour party do not want to make winners out of losers. In the case that neither party gets an absolute majority at the next general election, I presume that they will not seek to impose their minority manifesto upon the country. In that context I was more than a little surprised to hear [Interruption.] I think I hear the laughter of agreement from the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan).

David Davies: Can the hon. Gentleman assure us that if by any chance his party comes third, it will not seek to implement any of its manifesto on any of us?

Lembit �pik: The irony is lost on the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), as usual. It is somewhat dog-in-the-manger to hear the bleating of democratic concern from Conservatives [Interruption.] I am about to say something about the Conservatives, not about Labour. The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) should not provoke me. He would not like me when I am angry.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Although I am pleased to find such good humour among Members, perhaps we should concentrate on the debate.

Lembit �pik: I was momentarily distracted, Madam Deputy Speaker, by the sheep noises from the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd. Hopefully, his support for rural policies will follow from that.
	There is a degree of schizophrenia in the way that the Conservatives approach issues of democratic mandate, but perhaps that is a matter for another day. I am frustrated by the apparent about-turn made by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), who has my considerable admiration and respect, but not when he picks and chooses the manifesto commitments that he thinks his Government should see through. He is quite willing to see the utter abandonmentthe U-turnon other manifesto commitments, such as on student top-up fees, when that suits him. Let us remember that the Government could not have been any clearer in 2001 about their opposition to introducing student top-up fees, and went on blatantly to break that commitment. When the right hon. Gentleman comes to use his manifesto promises on this occasion, he will understand why some of us are rather cynical about when and where Labour right hon. and hon. Members choose to support their Government.
	The second point, which I make to the Secretary of State, is that the Government did not win the last general election. They got roughly a third of the vote. [Hon. Members: Oh!] Hon. Members seem surprised by the mathematics of my claim. I think they will understand when I say that 35 per cent. support suggests to me that 65 per cent. of people voted against their proposition. Even in Wales, a majority of voters voted against the Government's manifesto, so they cannot realistically cite in defence of their proposalany proposalthe claim that a majority of people in Wales voted for their manifesto commitment.
	The amendment tabled by the Conservatives and ourselves reversed the Government's attempt to ban dual candidacy, for the reasons that we have discussed many times, some of which have been repeated by the Conservative spokesperson this afternoon. The amendment maintains the electoral status quo, with Assembly Members able to stand simultaneously for a constituency seat and on the list.
	The Liberal Democrats have always maintained that the dual candidacy debate, which has attracted the most attention in the media of all the issues relating to the Bill, is not the single most important issue. It is, in a sense, a secondary procedural issue which has attracted a disproportionate amount of attention. The Bill is fundamentally about devolution and the extent and quality of the powers handed down to the Assembly. Nevertheless, since we are debating it and the Secretary of State is inviting us to rehearse the arguments again, let us recall briefly why there has been opposition to what he and the Labour Government seek to do.
	The Clwyd, West problem is something of a red herring. The Government White Paper stated that the current arrangement for dual candidacy
	devalues the integrity of the electoral system in the eyes of the public and acts as a disincentive to vote in constituency elections,
	presumably because candidates who lose constituency elections can become Assembly Members via the list. However, the Electoral Reform Society commented:
	It has been almost universally agreed that there is little evidence
	to back up the Government's claims.
	In her submission to the Welsh Affairs Committee, Kay Jenkins, Head of Office at the Electoral Commission, said:
	There is no evidence that the Clwyd West so-called problem has had any impact on voter participation. . . We have got a very extensive body of research on what makes people vote and not vote across Britain and particularly specifically in Wales, and it is on that basis that we say it is not an issue we could say has ever been raised with us.
	In their evidence to the Committee, Dr. Roger Scully and Dr. Richard Wyn Jones from the university of Aberystwyth cited a study that they had done. They said:
	The total number of people who mentioned anything at all as a reason for not voting in 2003 in our sample was 2; that is out of more than 500 who said they did not vote.
	Let us remember that the Welsh Affairs Committee was split strongly along party lines on the matter and voted 5 to 4 to back the Government's stance. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) voted against the Bill's proposals, as did the three Conservative members. There are no points for guessing the party affiliation of those who voted for it.
	Faced with all that powerful evidence to suggest that the Government are pursuing their proposal for party interest rather than democratic interest

Albert Owen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Lembit �pik: In a moment. I was about to say that we have one robust piece of research from the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David), which we will hear about after the break.

Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman says there is massive evidence and cited two people out of 500 who did not vote. What evidence does he have for the assertion that he keeps makingon Second Reading and subsequentlythat the Labour party will benefit in Wales? He has none, so why does he keep repeating that it is acting for party political interests? He quotes evidence to back one argument, but he keeps asserting another for which he has no evidence.

Lembit �pik: The reason is fairly obvious to all of us on the Opposition Benches and, I suspect, to a number of members of the Labour party. The reason is that the present electoral mathematics would make it, as far as we can see, attractive to Labour Members to try and separate the list from the constituencies. [Interruption.] Members just saying from a sedentary position that that is not the case does not alter my perception that it is the case.  [Interruption.] Well, it is a perception; that is what I believe is going on.

Roger Williams: My hon. Friend is very perceptive.

Lembit �pik: And I am a very perceptive individual, as my hon. Friend perceptively points out.
	Having said that, let me respond to the plea for information by the hon. Member for Ynys Mn (Albert Owen) by citing the one piece of research that we have discussed in defence of the change. It comes from the hon. Member for Caerphilly. His research has been discredited as hardly scientific, but it is laudable that he still clings to the morsels of hope that it provides for his conscience in respect of seeing that this change needs to be made.

Wayne David: The hon. Gentleman refers to the research as my research. Does he not accept that it was conducted by an independent think-tank?

Lembit �pik: If the hon. Gentleman had reread a debate that we had in the past it would save me a lot of time in highlighting why we think that his research is desperately flawed. Indeed, I have little doubt that that research will go on to prove that he is the greatest politician who ever stoodin Caerphillyand that Labour is the greatest party ever to represent Wales.  [Interruption.] The sheeplike noises from Labour Members back up that assumption. My point is that that was the only research that we heard in defence of the change.
	The final defence for the change, which we heard from the Secretary of State, is that the current electoral arrangements have been subject to, in his words,
	systematic abuse for party advantage by Opposition parties.
	He must acknowledge that the Electoral Reform Societywhich does not have a party interest in supporting one system or anothersaid that
	a ban on dual candidacy will not provide a solution to this dilemmawhether or not they are permitted to stand as constituency candidates, there is nothing to stop list candidates from targeting particular constituencies on behalf of their parties.
	The ERS concludes:
	We urge the Government to reconsider their plan to ban dual candidacy, a controversial and divisive argument for which the case has not adequately been made.

Cheryl Gillan: Would the hon. Gentleman also like to acknowledge that even if the Secretary of State could not reply to the letters from Nick Bourne, the leader of the Conservatives in the Welsh Assembly, he did reply to Rhodri Morgan, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, in respect of producing any evidence of the alleged abuse of positions by regional Members of the National Assembly for Wales? On 25 April, the reply came that the Government had not been able to uncover any such information. No evidence whatever of any abuse has been brought forward. Therefore, they are basing these electoral changes on a false premise.

Lembit �pik: I have to admit that I agree with the hon. Lady. That serves to underline the reason behind my response to the hon. Member for Caerphilly and others: they have failed to provide a plausible intellectual or objective defence of the change that they wish to make.
	I ask the Secretary of State one last time to reconsider. Trying to make this change has not been the Government's finest hour. Whether or not they admit that, they must accept that the perception is that this is being done out of party political interest, and it is beyond us why they continue to pretend that it will go the slightest way towards preventing targeting by one party of a constituency held by another.

Roger Williams: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government's proposals would not stop a successful list candidate in one election targeting a constituency for the next election? These proposals do not prevent that from happening.

Lembit �pik: My hon. Friend is completely right.
	There is a final piece of good news. If the Government's intentions are sincere, they will ensure that Labour Members who represent one constituency will not be actively involved in trying to win constituencies around their own. But of course we know that that will not happen; we know that in the competition of British politics, parties will attempt to gain seats from each other, because that is how politics in this country works. When the Secretary of State used in defence of the change the argument that it would make it more difficult to do that, he was ignoring one political reality above another. The argument on this entire matter has not been persuasively made, and I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government might think again.

Don Touhig: I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for missing his opening remarks; it took me a little while to arrive in the Chamber once I saw that our business had started.
	Devolution is still a confusing and divisive issue in Wales. Although the National Assembly for Wales has been in place for more than seven years, much work still needs to be done to convince people of its worth. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) said on Second Reading on 24 January that when scrutinising any legislation before this House we must make full use of the Splott market test: how will that legislation affect the person shopping in Splott market on a Sunday? I apply the Blackwood high street test in much the same way. Seven years on, it is my belief that if we were to ask people their views on the Assembly's electoral system, a great many of them would say, confused. They are confused by it. Why is it, they ask, that people who are soundly beaten in a straightforward first-past-the-post election can then guarantee themselves a place in the top-up on the party list system?
	We have heard much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Opposition parties about winners and losers; looking around this Chamber, it is clear that we have a record of winning and they have a record of losing. For all the Opposition parties' arguments, it is surely unfair that a personsuch as the leader of the Tories or the Liberal Democrats in the Assemblywho has been rejected by the electorate in a constituency in the direct election can then gain a place at the top of the top-up list and find themselves in the National Assembly. Indeed, I understand that they can then call themselves alternative AMs for the constituency that they represent. That is a bizarre practice, which I am told has the support of the Presiding Officer.

David Davies: The hon. Gentleman has a point, but although that is a bizarre practice it is a fault of the proportional representation system itself. Why does he not have the courage to come out and say that PR is a bad electoral system, instead of making subtle changes that will not prevent the situation he has described?

Don Touhig: The hon. Gentleman and I might find ourselves in some agreement about PR, but that is perhaps a matter for another day.
	People ask why it is that the party with the largest share of the vote in the top-upthe Labour party got 36.6 per cent. of the vote in the top-up at the last Assembly electionsis denied any seats as a result of that. My own view, for what it is worth, is that we should separate the first-past-the-post system from the top-up system so that the results truly reflect the wishes of the electorate.
	It is a matter of some regret to me that the Bill does not do that. However, I accept that my Front-Bench colleagues have to gain the broadest possible consensus on a constitutional Bill of this nature, and although I believe that my proposals are right, they certainly would not produce a consensusbut then I have never been a consensus politician. The fundamental issue is how we can make this system more effective and more just. I believe that the amendment that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has tabled to overturn the Lords amendment is right, and it has my full support.

David Davies: I am one of the people who the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) referred to earlier: I voted and campaigned against the Welsh Assembly and I make absolutely no apologies for doing so.  [Interruption.] In response to more noises from Labour Back Benchers, let me say thatas with members of Plaid Cymru, who are sitting in a Parliament whose location is perhaps not of their choosing, and members of the Liberal Democrat party, who have fought many elections under a voting system that they do not necessarily agree withit is right that Conservatives who had opposed the Welsh Assembly were more than happy to accept it as a reality on the ground and to work constructively to try to ensure that it delivered stability for Wales. Seven years down the line however, it comes as something of a surprise to all of us that, instead of looking at why the voting turnout is not what it should be, the Government have decided to push through a subtle, but very sneaky, change to the electoral system.
	In a very worthy speech, the hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) decried the overall system of proportional representation and pointed out that it means that people who have not gained the confidence of the majority of an electorate in a given constituency can nevertheless sit as Members of this institution. The right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) made a similar point, and I have to say that I have a great deal of sympathy with that view. I do not believe in the PR system. I happen to agree with him that a Member's representing first and foremost the people who vote for him, rather than the political party that put him there, is indeed the jewel in the crown of our electoral system. But I then have to ask Labour Members why, if they believe that, they propose a subtle change to an electoral system that will allow the overall principle to continue, instead of having the political courage to come out and say, We don't believe in proportional representation. We are going to scrap it completely and have either one or two Members elected to each constituency in Wales.
	That would be an intellectually honest approach for Members who do not like the PR system to take.  [Interruption.] I am quite happy to take interventions. But instead, those Members propose a change so subtle that very few people will understand it. This is where I begin to diverge from the right hon. Member for Torfaen, because the reality is that virtually nobody will complain that they wanted not this PR system, but another one. We are used to receiving hundreds of letters from our constituents about a variety of thingsfrom the situation in the middle east to whether bears should be used in circusesbut I can honestly say that in my one year as a Member of this place, and in seven as a Member of the Welsh Assembly, I have not received a single letter suggesting that the current PR system is wrong and should be amended. Nobody has ever come up to me in the street and suggested that the system should be changed. I have heard many people, some from my own association, say, Scrap PR altogether, but I have never heard anyone suggest that this subtle change to the system will make any difference to voter turnout or anything else.
	So one has to ask why the Government are going ahead with this proposal, and the answer is that, yes, they are going to derive a straightforward political advantage from doing so. They know perfectly well that the minority parties benefit from the PR top-up system, so it is those partiesthe Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Conservative partythat will be most disadvantaged by the change that the Government are pushing through, and which they know very few people will understand. I am afraid that some of the reasons that they have come up with for the changeI tried to make a note of some of themare absolutely pathetic. I have heard it said that AMs do not like regional Assembly Members competing with them in their constituencies, but those who say that seem not to have grasped the simple fact that, even if this change is made, regional Assembly Members will still be able to open an office in, and put up a sign in, the constituencies of existing Labour AMs, and some will still do so. If Labour AMs are doing their job properly, they will have absolutely nothing to fear from regional AMs.
	The regional AM for South Wales Eastthe leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Welsh Assembly, no lesshas often tried to portray himself as the AM for Monmouth. That never bothered me in the slightest, and do you know why, Madam Deputy Speaker? Because everyone would scratch their heads on reading his leaflets and wonder who the hell this bloke was who was pretending to be the AM for Monmouth, when they all thought that it was me. Such behaviour reflected rather badly on those people. If directly elected AMs are doing their job properly, they have nothing to fear from regional AMs who would like to think that they represent a constituency.
	We have heard it said that it is unfair that a directly elected AM should have to contest an election against somebody who has already been doing the job for a couple of years, and who has been pretending to be the AM for the area. What this amounts to is that the Labour party, which has enjoyed a political monopoly in Wales for decades, is just a little upset at the fact that it is losing the advantage of incumbency. Instead of fighting against candidates who do not have all the advantages of sitting AMs or MPs, they are fighting against those who, to some extent, have the same opportunities and the same access to offices and leaflets, and they do not like it. They do not like competition on an equal basis.
	The Government are pushing through a change that they know will mean that regional AMs will be in direct competition with members of their own party who are standing for the constituency seat. That is why this change will undermine the minority parties. The Government know the game and they do not want us to explain it, but we all know that the reality is that a regional AM will suddenly find themselves in direct competition with a colleague from their own party who is standing for the constituency in question. That is why the Government are pushing through this change. They can smile and laugh, because they know that most people will be lost when the change is explained to them. They know that the man on the Pontypool omnibusif there are such things any more; that is perhaps a debate for another time, but thanks to the cuts, many such services are disappearing [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order.

David Davies: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not going to talk about the No. 73 omnibus that runs between Chepstow and Cwmbran, because that one is disappearing as well. But the fact is that nobody on any of the few omnibuses that are left in Wales is talking about the need to change the PR system in the way that this Government propose. Tonight, they want to use their majority to push through a profoundly undemocratic change to the electoral system. I urge those decent members of the Labour party to forget about their party Whips, for once, to think about what is good for democracy in Wales, to reject what their Government are trying to do, and to support the Lords amendments tonight.

Albert Owen: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), with whom I agreed on a couple of points. However, there is no party political advantage to this proposal. The Opposition parties have had opportunities on Second and Third Reading, on Report and in the Lords to come up with evidence that this proposal will lead to a party advantage for Labour, but they have failed to do so.

Stephen Crabb: The hon. Gentleman sat through, and read the evidence sessions of, the Welsh Affairs Committee, and he will have heard the Electoral Commission say that, regardless of whether this change will lead to a measurable party advantage, the mere perception of a partisan advantage is enough to undermine faith and trust in the democratic process. We have heard a lot of talk this evening about trying to achieve cross-party consensus, but through this proposal the Government have set their face against consensus.

Albert Owen: I hate to correct the hon. Gentleman on facts and detail, but I was not a member of the Welsh Affairs Committee and I did not participate in that evidence session. I did read the report of that session, but I did not agree with it. Reference was made to perceptions, but what we need to talk about is facts and how we are going to move the Bill forward.

Cheryl Gillan: If the hon. Gentleman wants to talk about facts, he has only to look at the vote that took place in the Assembly. The casting vote by the presiding officer, who had to vote in the way that he did, was the only reason why the motion was carriedit was all the Labour party AMs against the rest. What more evidence could there be of a partisan Labour position?

Albert Owen: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention and I am very glad that my Labour colleagues in the Assembly agree with the Labour party in Wales. We stood on a very firm manifesto commitment. My Front-Bench colleagues will be very happy to know that I carry my copy of the manifesto with me and read it in great detail. This is a very serious issue, and on page 108 of the manifesto, there are three very clear statements about our intention to introduce the Government of Wales Bill.

Lembit �pik: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Albert Owen: We have had very unclear statements from the Opposition, so it is right that I read out those statements before giving way. The first says:
	In a third term we will legislate for a stronger Assembly with enhanced legislative powers.
	Some Opposition Members disagreed with that idea during our debates and that is fine, but that is what our manifesto states. The second statement is:
	We will improve the accountability of Ministers by ending the confusing corporate status of the Assembly.
	So it is very clear that that is what we are going to do, and we have the support of this House. These days, I am far more diplomatic than the Secretary of State on such issues. I understand that we have these debates, and I am not really worried about this legislation, but I am proud that we are standing by our manifesto commitments. One cannot get much clearer than the third statement:
	Alongside the changes we will prevent candidates from standing on both the list and in a constituency in order to make all candidates genuinely accountable to the electorate and to end Assembly Members being elected via the backdoor even when they have already been rejected by voters.
	That is a very clear commitment and I stand by it. When I discussed the Assembly on the doorsteps of Ynys Mn, that very issue did arise, and I intend to vote with the Government.

Lembit �pik: Does the hon. Gentleman therefore oppose the appointment to another place of candidates who obviously lost in the elections in Wales? Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, is the hon. Gentleman really expecting us to believe that the Labour party voted for the proposed change, while all the other parties voted against, because it wanted to help all the other parties and thought of no particular benefit whatsoever for the Labour party?

Albert Owen: Those two points do not relate to the clause. I think that the hon. Gentleman leads with his chin. I do not agree with the House of Lords per se. It is an unelected Chamber and I hope that I have the opportunity in this Parliament to vote for a democratic Chamber in the other place. That is where I stand on the House of Lords. As I have said, the hon. Gentleman leads with his chin because one of his colleagues is sitting in the Gallery, someone who has been rejected on several occasions by the electorate of north Wales. I do not think that that person or any others should be in the House of Lords. That is my answer to the hon. Gentleman.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. First, it is not in order to refer to whoever might be in the Gallery. Secondly, let us now concentrate on the amendment.

Albert Owen: I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I could not resist referring to the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in Wales.

Don Touhig: Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Liberal Democrats did not have a host of rejected parliamentary candidates, they would not have anybody in the House of Lords?

Albert Owen: I shall keep with the amendment that is before us. However, I agree with my hon. Friend.
	Our manifesto stated clearly what we were going to do and I am proud that we have adhered to that. However, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is perhaps too diplomatic with regard to the status of the House of Lords. We know the position. We have had great debates on Second Reading and Third Reading, and we have carried the measure through with a huge majority. Now, the House of Lordsno one has elected its membersfeels that it can overturn our decisions. This is a constitutional issue. I believe that the Salisbury convention should be adhered to and that Opposition Members should not support the other place. Instead, they should vote for democracy. They should vote in accordance with the Labour party manifesto, Labour being the largest party in this place. We are entitled to govern on our manifesto.

Elfyn Llwyd: The right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) did not on this occasion pray in aid the piece of research from Splott market. We had an exchange on that during previous proceedings. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had discussed the matter in a few pubs in his constituency. He was asked questions about time and so on, but we will not go into that now. Suffice it to say that, on any objective view, I do not believe that there is any evidence upon which the change can seriously be put to us. Opposition Members know that, despite the sterling efforts of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) and the fantastic ground-breaking piece of research that he commissionedit was not persuasive, but ground-breaking neverthelesswe have not been presented with very much.
	The right hon. Member for Torfaen said that he never did deals. For someone who has been in high office in the north of Ireland, that is difficult to understand. However, I am sure that, as always, he is telling the truth. However, a deal was struck for the proposal to go through between the anti-devolution Labour party and the pro-devolutionists. That is what it is all about. It is a piece of red meat to keep those who are against further devolution happy. That may or may not be relevant to the debate.
	We had a sterling speech, if a little ex-cathedra, from the hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig). It was interesting in that he showed that he does not want to see anybody else getting elected in Wales other than Labour candidates. I believe that that is his true position. At least he is honest enough to say it, and I respect that.
	I will not go through the evidence again because time is short and there are other important issues that we must discuss. However, I will touch briefly on one or two matters now. When the Secretary of State opened the debate he said that the Queen must give Royal Assent to the Bill at some time between now and Tuesday. The right hon. Gentleman detailed why that must be so, and I am sure that everything he said was right. He said that over the coming weeks and months there will need to be several references to the Electoral Commission for discussions and, if necessary, to vary regulations. On two occasions during his opening speech he prayed in aid the Electoral Commission. Why then was the electoral commissioner, Glyn Mathias, roundly ignored when he said that he thought that the proposal would be a partisan move and that there was no evidence to support it? Glyn Mathias commented on the research that the commission had undertaken. He said:
	This issue did not figure in that research. We asked a whole series of questions and sought unprompted replies and this issue did not arise...what concerns us is that there is no evidence whatever in the White Paper to back up this proposal...therefore, we came to the conclusion that we think that the case for change has not been made.
	This is the same Electoral Commission that will be busy in the coming weeks and months when the Bill is enacted. In this instance it was roundly ignored on an important part of the Bill.

Pete Wishart: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recognise the booklet that is in my handthe Arbuthnott report. It reached the same conclusion and found that there was no evidence to suggest that this was an issue for the public. In fact, Arbuthnott went further and suggested that dual candidacy was anti-democratic. Perhaps the difference between Arbuthnott and the Richard commission was that Arbuthnott was a cross-party document and was consensual, whereas the Richard commission was a Labour party inspiration which was there only to serve the Labour party.

Elfyn Llwyd: I differ slightly from what the hon. Gentleman says about Lord Richard. I think that Lord Richard did a sterling piece of work and I would not level a charge of partisanship at him. However, I take the hon. Gentleman's point. The Arbuthnott conclusions were quite different.
	I will not refer to the various academics who have been referred to at length in previous discussions, including Dr. Richard Wyn Jones and readers from the Napier university. As far as is known, the only other system that embodies the system that we are talking about introducing in Wales was in pre-revolution Ukraine. If we want to adhere to standards such as that, all well and good, but I ask must ask again where one might find the evidence for this change in the law? I cannot see it. Other hon. Members have referred to the Electoral Reform Society. There is a welter of evidence against the proposed change. The only thing in favour of it is the rather scant piece of research commissioned by the hon. Member for Caerphilly. The Government have brought the proposal before the House and have found that the only evidence to support it was commissioned by a Back-Bench Member of Parliament halfway through the proceedings. That is not persuasive.

Mark Tami: The hon. Gentleman refers to the Electoral Reform Society as if it did not have an agenda. It clearly has an agenda, and that is why it is putting forward the views that it is.

Elfyn Llwyd: What agenda does the Electoral Commission have? Would the hon. Gentleman care to speculate on that? I dare say that he cannot answer that question.

Cheryl Gillan: In the document before me, it says that
	the Electoral Commission is an independent body established by the UK Parliament in 2000 by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. We are independent of the UK Government and political parties, and are directly accountable to Parliament.

Elfyn Llwyd: This will go down as probably the most partisan change in the law in the last five years. Hon. Members may laugh because they are content with it; they know that it will assist them, so why should they not laugh about it? But others in different parties, others of no political affiliation and other academics throughout Britain and beyond have looked at this and come to the same conclusion. It is a partisan way of proceeding, and that is what we are arguing about. I do not say that it would necessarily benefit my party unduly, or indeed anybody else's, but it will benefit the Labour party, and that is why I am concerned about it. It is all very well referring to the Salisbury convention, but this is a bad piece of law that we are debating. It is partisan. I shall not refer to the other quotations.

Wayne David: Will the hon. Gentleman answer this simple question: how on earth will it benefit the Labour party?

Elfyn Llwyd: That has already been explained fully.  [Interruption.] How many times do hon. Members want to hear it? We have heard it from both sides of the House. Suffice it to say that my belief is that it will benefit the Labour party. It is not me saying so, but Dr. Scully, Dr. Wyn Jones and Dr. Weinstrob. I could go onSir John Arbuthnot. There are plenty of people to whom we could refer. Those people are entirely without political connection, and they have reached that conclusion.
	This matter will be put to a vote, I believe on a matter of principle. I do not want to see the rest of the Bill being delayed, but this is a bad clause and the Lords are right in their conclusion on this part of the Bill at least.

Peter Hain: I was gently rebuked by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Mn (Albert Owen) for being too diplomatic in my introduction, but I reassure him that I have been severely provoked this evening by the Opposition's contributions. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) seems to question the Salisbury convention. She seems to pay no attention to that convention, under which, for generations, the unelected House of Lords defers to a manifesto commitment of the governing party in the elected House of Commonsa point ably made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy). She seems to dismiss this. I do not know whether it is a new Conservative party policya party that had just 30 per cent. of the votethat the House of Lords should be able to trample over all the manifesto commitments of the governing party, elected by the people to form the Government of this country. I disagree with her, because therein lies a recipe for constitutional confusion.

Cheryl Gillan: It is not a question of rubbishing, ignoring or talking down the Salisbury convention; it is just that the right hon. Gentleman has done a deal with the Liberal Democrats, so the arithmetic adds up in his favour. It is as simple as that.

Peter Hain: I would have been happy to do a deal with the hon. Lady, if she had shown the same support for the principle of devolution in the Bill as the Liberal Democrats, who in particular have the interests of Wales at heart, rather than the interests of narrow party concerns. I am surprised that she refers to us dumping manifesto commitments. The Leader of the Opposition almost daily dumps commitments from the election manifesto on which he and the hon. Lady were elected just over a year ago.
	Mention has been made of Ukraine. The truth is that this issue has become controversial right across the globe, from Canada to New Zealand, not simply Ukraine. That evidence has been given at length in earlier debates in the House. I am asked for evidence. In the interests of brevity, I did not quote the evidence because it has all been quoted before, but I have a fistful of quotes and evidence, from Lord Carlile of Berriew, the former leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, speaking in the House of Lords on 15 June, and from Lord Richard, the chair of the Richard commission, in testimony to the Welsh Affairs Committee on 25 October. This is about Wales, but mention has been made of Scotland, so let us look at Scotland. The former Liberal Democrat Presiding Officer of the Scottish Assembly castigated the abuse of the system, saying that it had been thoroughly abused, and that was despite the code of conduct in Scotland, which we do not have in Wales. I could carry on providing all the evidence: there is the evidence of the chief of staff of the Scottish Liberal Democrats andof the leader of the Assembly Conservative group, on 14 June and again on 15 June. I could also quote some academic evidence.

Cheryl Gillan: rose

Peter Hain: I just want to carry on with this point. A fistful of evidence has been presented during the debates in both Houses, but particularly in this House. I do not want to detain the House by repeating it all, although I am happy to do so if provoked. I do not know whether the hon. Lady wants to provoke me.

Cheryl Gillan: I am certainly not trying to promote the Secretary of State, who is clearly struggling. [Hon. Members: Promote?] No, provoke. I certainly would not want to promote him, although I think that he would like to promote himself. The right hon. Gentleman made some obtuse remarks about what is happening in other countries. In Italy and Denmark, and in some regions of Germany, double candidacy is expressly required, and candidates have been permitted to run both in constituencies and in lists in Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Hungary and Russia, all of which have had mixed Member systems running since the 1990s. Therefore the throwaway line that the system is not used in other countries is not entirely accurate, and that is from the Electoral Commission's report.

Peter Hain: The hon. Lady obviously did not listen to what I was saying. I said that the issue had arisen and that great concern had been expressed right across the globe.
	Then the hon. Lady asks where in Wales the concern has arisen. I will tell her. I, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, and my right hon. and hon. Friends, have had meetings up and down the country. At those meetings there was more burning anger among the public on this issue than on anything else. There was strong feeling about the need to put the voters in charge. That is the fundamental democratic principle at stake here.

David Davies: rose

Peter Hain: I will give way in a moment.
	The voters should be in charge. If the voters kick somebody out in the constituency, why should that person pop up on the list and be elected? That is not the voters in charge; that is the party manipulating the system. In almost every case, those whom voters rejected in the constituencies in 1999 and 2003 popped up on the regional lists. That is why we are asserting the basic principle of parliamentary democracy that the voters are boss. If the voters reject somebody, they should not be elected by the back door. People do not understand how on earth that can happen and that is why we are correcting this widespread abuse. I say abuse, because it is not just a matter of principle, it is the fact that time and again we have seen regional list Members abusing the system by coming into constituencies claiming to be the elected Members for those constituencies when they are not. A Plaid Cymru Assembly Member has presented a dossier on how to manipulate the situation in the interests of her party, and that has been referred to at length in the House. I could go on and on, so I will allow the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) to intervene to provoke me further.

David Davies: Many of us here are astounded that at these many meetings that the Secretary of State attended there was so much anger about a proportional representation voting system, yet nobody mentioned the health service, the council tax or the lack of dentists. He said that there was more anger about this matter than anything else. Is he living on the same planet as the rest of us?

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman is a vocal but junior Member of the House. I was talking about consultation on the devolution Bill, on what should go into it, on the policy that should fulfil our party commitments following the Richard commission's report. At those meetings, people wanted to discuss the detail of what might transpire in a Bill to follow the recommendation of the Richard commission, which would command support across the House. That issue was one of the most strongly feltindeed, there was bitter anger up and down Wales. Look at the situation in Clwyd, West, where the sitting Labour Member defeated all the other candidates, who all got elected nevertheless.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Mn has said, the Labour party will be equally hit by the provision, which will not benefit any party in particular. When we asked for evidence of how it could possibly benefit the Labour party, the hon. Member for Monmouth and others changed their tune and began to talk about perception. We want evidence: where is the evidence that the Labour party could benefit by putting the voters in charge?
	I am grateful for the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig), despite the fact that he has never pretended to be an enthusiast for more and more powers for the Assembly. He has worked with me honourably and with great influence in framing the Bill, for which I am grateful. I secretly sympathise with his advocacy of a first-past-the-post system, but if we were to introduce one in this Bill, we would hear even louder complaints of abuse.

Lembit �pik: If the Secretary of State and the Government are so concerned about giving voters a choice, will they consider creating open lists? That would allow the electorate to vote for an individual rather than a party that then appoints an individual. Without being party political, that would be a rational and reasonable step forward, although I accept that it is not included in the legislation that we are discussing today.

Peter Hain: No; I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman and do not propose to introduce such a provision at this late stage, especially given the consultation across Wales.
	In conclusion, the basic point of the Government's position is that the voters should be in charge, not the parties, and that losers should not become winners. Why are the Opposition parties so scared of having to make a choice between standing in a constituency or standing on a regional list? The voters expect candidates to make that choice, and the integrity of the system will be increased by it, especially because at least six sitting Labour Members will be penalisedif that is the wordalong with other party members. In my view, however, no one will be penalised; indeed, I think that the voters will win.
	I welcome the point made by Lord Elis-Thomas, the Presiding Officer of the Assembly, who has said that the argument has been wonhe has recognised the realityand both former leaders of Plaid Cymru have made the same point. We need Royal Assent for the Bill before the end of the Session, and I hope that nobody will seek to frustrate that ambition and that the Government's position will be carried tonight.

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:
	 The House divided: Ayes 294, Noes 213.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to.

Clause 94
	  
	Legislative competence: supplementary

Lords amendment: No. 17.

Nick Ainger: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Lords amendments Nos. 21 and 22 and the Government motions to disagree thereto.

Nick Ainger: The amendments would limit the effect of the powers to make retrospective provision in Orders in Council under clauses 94 and 150, or in an order under clause 149.
	The power in clause 94 is necessary to correct legislative competence retrospectively when that would give proper effect to the intention of Parliament and the Assembly, when not to do so could leave the law in an unclear state, or when it could be detrimental to third parties if that was not done. If the provision is used, it is likely to be to correct a technical defect.
	Clause 150(4) follows the model of sections 107 and 114 of the Scotland Act 1998. As Lord Evans of Temple Guiting pointed out on Third Reading in another place, it was necessary to make provision under those sections of the Scotland Act when it transpired that a provision of the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 was considered to be beyond the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament.
	The Bill provides that any provision of a measure that is outside the legislative competence of the Assembly is not law. If another Act made provision referring to that measure, it might be necessary to amend that other Act as if it had never referred to the ultra vires provision of the Assembly measure. As the Scottish example shows, that will happen rarely, but the provision may well be needed.
	The relevant provision in clause 149 relates purely to consequential amendments. For example, the Secretary of State might need to amend a corresponding reference in Northern Ireland legislation, which the Assembly could not do.
	The Lords amendments intend to ensure that such provision can be made only if it is not to the detriment of those who have either benefited from or acted in reliance on the law before such an order was made. The Opposition case for that is based on an argument that the power could be used to reverse the effect of court decisions and infringe individuals' rights. That concern is clearly importantno one in the House wants the rights of individuals to be arbitrarily abridged. However, I cannot envisage circumstances in which that would be allowed to happen. The safeguards that the Bill already includes would prevent it.
	First, the Secretary of State would have to act consistently with the Human Rights Act 1998. Secondly, such provision cannot be made at the whim of the Executive. If any attempt were ever made to abuse such a provision and use it in a way that was detrimental to the rights of individuals, Parliament could block it. All Orders in Council under clauses 94 and 150 and orders under clause 149 that amend primary legislation will be subject to full parliamentary oversight.
	The power to make retrospective provision exists primarily to allow technical points to be tackled. Let me make it clear that the Government would not make an order that retrospectively altered a court's decision. If a future Government were to try to do that, Parliament would block it.

Dominic Grieve: What the Under-Secretary said is not the same as the comments of Lord Evans of Temple Guiting in his letter to Lord Kingsland. The letter stated that he would not move goalposts by seeking to change retrospectively the law on which a case was based while it was before the court and without the leave of the court. That is not what the Under-Secretary said. He went much further a moment ago. He said that if a court decision were to go against the Assembly or the Government, there would be no question of changing it retrospectively. Those are two different things. It is important for hon. Members to understand which we mean.

Nick Ainger: Let me continue with my argument. Such a provision would never be used retrospectively to amend a court order, although it could be used, depending on the circumstances, to deal with the results flowing from a court's decision. I hope that that deals with the hon. Gentleman's point.
	The Government do not envisage the power to make retrospective provision being exercised except in very rare cases. While I understand the thrust of the amendments, there are sound reasons why the Government cannot accept them. There could be public interest considerations in favour of making retrospective provision. It is not right that the Government should be prevented from taking the public interest into account in making legislation. Furthermore, the amendments are technically defective and would render the provisions that relate to retrospective provisions inoperable.

John Gummer: As a Minister, I always found that when civil servants said, Minister, you have to do this because there is a public interest requirement, it was usually because they could not think of anything else. Will the Under-Secretary give us a practical example of when the public interest was so important that it necessitated what appears to many of us to be an unacceptable change?

Nick Ainger: Yes, I can give an example. Let us imagine that both Houses of Parliament agreed a measure that related to a position following a public inquiry into the construction of a bypass. If, after compulsory purchase orders and payments had been made, a defect was found in the legislative competence, it would be in the public interest retrospectively to set the record straight in legal terms to allow the payments that had already been made to be retained, and no claims to be made against the individuals who had received the money from the compulsory purchase. That would enable the bypass to go ahead in the public interest, and not to the detriment of the individual who had received funds from the Government in exchange for the land. That is an example of the public good benefiting from retrospective legislation such as that for which clauses 94 and 150 provide.
	It is impossible to identify with certainty all persons who could be in any way detrimentally affected as a consequence of such an order before it was made. It would therefore never be clear whether an order could lawfully be made, even if there were an overwhelming public interest in making it. I therefore invite hon. Members to reject the amendments.

Dominic Grieve: I am grateful that the Under-Secretary acknowledged that the clause, which was amended in the other place, raises serious problems. It is not common practice for the House to pass measures that can apply retrospectively. Retrospective powers enable the Government to interfere with private rights in a way that is contrary to the principles of the rule of law in this country. For the Under-Secretary to claim that the provision is simply a balancing exercise under the Human Rights Act 1998 is an inadequate response.
	The Human Rights Act might be a basic safety net to deal with certain Governments who do not have democratic practices or who have had them only for a short period and do not enjoy the principles of the rule of law, but it does not replace the rule of law. Private legal rights operate because the rule of law says that they do, and because the judges say that they do. Sometimes, we have had to face the fact that the people who benefit from those rights appear to be remarkably undeserving of them. We have, for example, had debates about lords of the manor who have enforced a form of blackmail in respect of rights of way over common land until a court judgment removed them. However, no one in their right mind ever suggested that that entitled Members of Parliament to remove those people's rights retrospectively, thereby depriving them of a financial advantage.
	The Government are contemplating a measure that is being introduced with a desire to rectify technical omissionsI fully accept that that is their intentionbut that could have the unintended consequence of depriving someone of a private legal advantage, because it will be applied retrospectively. There is no suggestion in the proposals that any compensation would be made to a person who was thus adversely affected.
	This matter was raised in the other place, and Lord Kingsland, who was speaking for the official Opposition, suggested that these clauses should be removed altogether. However, he was mindful of what the Government were trying to achieve. The amendments that were eventually passed therefore sought not to remove the retrospective power but to limit it by saying that such an order could be made, provided that it was
	not to the detriment of those who have either benefited from or acted in reliance upon the state of the law before the retrospective Order is made.
	As an issue of principle, the Minister cannot possibly contend that that is an unfair provision. He might, however, say that the proposal would have the consequence of making it impossible to pass such a retrospective order. I can see his point. If that is his problem, however, he is going to have to find a way of solving it, either by specifying that anyone adversely affected would be entitled to full compensation or by some other method. It is not good enough simply to say that there will be a balancing exercise and that the measure would be used only in cases where the public benefit appeared overwhelmingly to outweigh the private advantage.
	Private law and people's rights under the law are not about the balancing of public rights with private advantage. Private advantage has complete supremacy. The principle under which we operate in this country in maintaining the rule of law is that if we interfere with someone's private rights, as specified in the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights, we must pay them compensation for doing so.
	I am really troubled to read the Government's approach to this matter. In the letter that Lord Evans of Temple Guiting wrote to my noble Friend Lord Kingsland, he said, with reference to the point at which the provision would kick in:
	The Secretary of State would have to consider any action carefully for its compatibility with human rights. He would not move the goalposts by seeking to change retrospectively the law on which a case was based while that case was before the court and without the leave of the court.
	That is why I picked up the Minister's comment that the Government would not seek retrospectively to alter a court judgment. When I challenged the Minister on that, he started to back off a little. He left me with the distinct impression that the Government might choose to act retrospectively, before a case came to court, to prevent a person from exercising his legal rights and to challenge an order that had been made. He also left me with the distinct impression that there might be circumstances in which, notwithstanding a court judgment, the Government would still seek to apply the provision retrospectively.

John Gummer: Did not my hon. Friend hear the explanation that the Minister gave as an example of when it would be suitable to use this power? When he gave that example, he showed that the Government would be judge and jury in their own case. It would be for the Government to decide whether the use of the power would interfere with a person's private rights, and they would make that decision on the basis of their own convenience. The Minister tried to dignify the measure by talking about public value, but what he meant was the convenience of the Executive.

Dominic Grieve: My right hon. Friend is exactly right. This is what troubles me so much about the measure. Lord Evans of Temple Guiting's officials had clearly advised him very carefully when he wrote that letter. He expressed himself in terms so precise that, when Lord Kingsland looked at it, he said that he was wholly dissatisfied with the answer. The Minister has gone slightly further, but my right hon. Friend is correct. What the Minister is actually saying is that the Government will decide, when balancing the considerations involved, whether a private right would be interfered with. That must raise the possibility that, as long as the Government did not think that the private right interfered with was too serious a matterso it might slip outside the ambit of the European convention on human rightsthey would still feel justified in going ahead and applying the provision retrospectively. I am very happy with the ECHR, but it is simply a safety net in this context. Our practice in this country is not to allow such things to happen. Indeed, it would be quite contrary to every legal principle to let this occur.
	I am fairly unsympathetic to the principle behind all this. I have to be honest about that. I believe that government by statutory instrument is riddled with problems such as these, and an Order in Council is no different from a statutory instrument; it just involves different wording. The reality is that Wales is going to be governed by Order in Councila practice that I regard as absolutely abominable and an offence to every principle that we have in the House.
	If the Government go ahead with this measure, I foresee that they might need to address certain problems. May I suggest to the Secretary of State and the Minister, both of whom are in the Chamber, that if they want to get this provision on the statute book but do not like the form of words that the Lords have come up with, they should make a clarifying statement to make it absolutely clear that if it is established that private legal rights are affected retrospectively in any way, the person affected will be entitled to redress. Without that assurance, I will remain profoundly unhappy about this proposal.
	This is a classic example of administrative convenience triumphing over private rights, all dressed up, in good new Labour style, in the assertion that it is for the public benefit. I do not accept that. What is more, the Government know that they are on pretty shaky ground here. I urge the Minister to go away and think again.
	In the other place, the Liberal Democrats appeared to support us on this issue, and I hope that that will remain the case. It was unclear, however, when the vote was called, whether they were really going to provide proper support in that important Division. Some of them said they would support us but did not. I have no idea why that happened. I hope that it is not part of the Lib-Lab pact on this issue, by which the Liberal Democrats have demeaned themselves in the course of the discussions on this important constitutional measure.
	We will certainly resist the motion to disagree with the Lords amendment, although I have no doubt that the Government will carry the day. If the Secretary of State and the Minister do not like the form of words that the Lords have used, they should go back and provide proper reassurance when the Bill returns to the other place that the provision will not be left in the form to which they now wish to return it.

Lembit �pik: I am interested to hear talk of a Lib-Lab pact. I presume that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) is referring to two parties working together in the common interest, just as the Conservatives and the Labour party did when they voted together to take us to war in Iraq. What is going on here, however, is a genuine commitment to furthering democracy and devolution in Wales. I almost said Northern Ireland then, because I saw the Secretary of State leaving the Chamber, no doubt to deal with other important matters.
	Our concern is, to an extent, the same as that described by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, namely, that retrospective legislation is open to attack on the basis that it can be abused. Something achieved by an individual or an organisation acting in good faith, on the assumption that the law is there to protect them, can be modified by the institutions of Government to favour themselves. That point was made by Lord Thomas of Gresford in the upper House. He said:
	A person may engage in litigation and say, 'I've won.' Then the Assembly may pass a measure that says, 'No, you haven't, you've lost, because they have retrospectively changed the provision on which his claim rested.
	That has been my concern, too, and it may be why the hon. Member for Beaconsfield could see an uneasiness among Liberal Democrat peers during that debate.
	No doubt the hon. Gentleman will also have read the further debate in the upper House on this matter and the dialogue between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, in which Lord Thomas challenged the Government to clarify two things. I hope that the Minister, by way of intervention or in his concluding comments, will respond explicitly to these points. Lord Thomas's concern was that it had to be underlined that the power would be used only to correct situations in which a measure had been made that was ultra vires through no fault of people acting in good faith and, presumably, within the law. I note that Lord Evans responded that that was correct.
	I would like the Minister explicitly and for the recordwe know that the record can be used in a court of lawto underline that that is his understanding of the Government's intention, and that it would be utterly unacceptable for the legislation to be used for any self-seeking purposes by an Administrationnot Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, but any Administration in the Welsh Assembly.
	The second specific concern expressed by Lord Thomas of Gresford related to the question whether the Assembly could use the legislation to remove from a litigant a victory achieved in litigation. Once again, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting underlined the point that it would not be acceptable under any circumstances for the Welsh Assembly Government to reverse successful actions by litigants by using the Bill as a blocking mechanism to change legislation retrospectively. I seek the Minister's assuranceonce again, for the sake of the recordthat that is explicitly the Bill's intention.
	I recognise that however hard we try to close these loopholes, there is a danger of abuse of any legislation. Despite the assurances given to Lord Thomas of Gresford on those two points in the upper House, and in anticipation of the Minister underlining them today, I acknowledge that we are still vulnerable to the abuse of power by individuals in government or whole Governments, should they be so minded. We are talking about a limited insurance policy here, but it is probably the most that we can ever expect when we are discussing legislation.
	The hon. Member for Beaconsfield usefully requested that the Minister put on the record some form of words to encapsulate the assurances that we seek. I suggest that one of the best forms of words is offered by Lord Kingsland, who tabled an amendment debated in great detail in another place. It would have inserted the words:
	provided that such an Order is not to the detriment of those who have either benefited from or acted in reliance upon the state of the law before the retrospective Order is made.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 13 July 2006; Vol. 684, c. 840.]
	It strikes me that a small modification to that amendment, expressed by the Minister, could be helpful without in any way being detrimental to what the Government are seeking to do.
	It would be helpful if the Minister confirmed that the Government want to modify the legislation as they have set out, but also explicitly to require such an order not to be to the detriment of those who have benefited from, or acted in reliance upon, the state of the law before the retrospective order was made. That would be a very helpful clarification. I can see no contradiction between the Bill as it has been put forward by the Government and the intentions as they have been reasonably expressed by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield.

Dominic Grieve: May I point outthe hon. Gentleman may already be aware of thisthat that is exactly what the amendments passed in the House of Lords say? They do not seek to knock out the power to make the retrospective legislation; they seek to insert that very form of words. The Minister says that that presents difficulties. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) may agree with me that in those circumstances the solution is for the Minister to find a form of words that meets the spirit of what has been said, but does not have those difficulties attached to it.

Lembit �pik: I said a few moments ago that I was reading the amendment tabled by Lord Kingsland, so the hon. Gentleman and I violently agree that that is the source of my recommendation.
	Although I see the force of the hon. Gentleman's argument about the amendment, I have, on reflection, accepted the Government's point that this retrospective latitude is probably, in limited circumstances, desirable and that it could be compromised were the Lord Kingsland amendment included in the Bill. However, I believe that its wording, as a statement of clarification, would be both helpful and consistent with the intent of the amendment. It would not in any way detract from the applicability of the retrospective facility in those areas where it could legitimately be used.
	I ask the Minister those three questionsincluding the two from Lord Thomas's inquiry in another place, which I have recitedand ask whether he is willing to reiterate the words in Lord Kingsland's amendment by way of clarification and reassurance on this reasonable and very specific point, to protect the interests of those who might otherwise be concerned that they would be harmed unfairly by the application of this retrospective facility.

John Gummer: The whole House should be grateful to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) for explaining to the world the Liberal Democrat approach to a complicated matter. It is to discuss it in as many ways as possible and to give no hint whatsoever as to how one should proceed thereafter.
	There is a real problem in debating whether to disagree with the Lords amendment in that we are debating a virtual Bill. Many of us, although perhaps not all Members on the opposition side of the House, believe that an extension of the powers of the Welsh Assembly is a good thing, but we would wish it to be presented to the people of Wales so that they could make up their minds. All this is a mechanism for trying to avoid asking the people of Wales whether they want what is in the Bill, in case they say that they do not want it. We get to this point and that becomes even clearer, because the Government have now discovered that directing the affairs of a nation by Orders in Council has a number of disadvantages, and there may be occasions when overlapping jurisdictions and particular facts mean that a bit of tidying up is necessary.
	I am always worried when Governments present their proposals as modest. I am always worried when they seek to suggest that there really is not very much in the measureit is a matter of convenience that may be for the national good and those of us who are concerned about the principle of retrospection really should not worry about it.
	There seem to me to be three reasons why we should worry very much. First, there is the Government's historic attitude towards retrospection. In two successive Finance Bills, they have introduced retrospection while pretending that it was not retrospection. That leads me to be suspicious when the word retrospection comes from this Government's mouth. Secondly, when the Government explained what they meant by the occasions on which they might use the provision, they produced an argument that seemed to nullify their own case. Let me turn to what the Minister said about the road that might have been built and the compensation that might have been paid. It seems to me that the Minister would decide not according to what was in the public interest, but according to what was convenient for the Government. It would be very inconvenient for the Government to have to go through the whole process again, but it might be very good for them because it might stop them getting into that kind of mess again. That is what legislation is aboutsetting the rules. If one breaks the rules, one should not have a nice little back-door mechanism of letting off the Government. The Government should have to fight their end, like anyone else, and in the course of doing so find that there were matters that were detrimental to private interest, and issues that ought to be taken up. All that would be hidden by this nice little trick, which is used by Government to make their life easier.
	Thirdly, if the words of my noble Friend Lord Kingsland are not accepted, that means that the Government will not stand by the content of that amendment. The Government are therefore saying that they might use retrospection when it overpassed the private rights of an individual, as defined in the Kingsland amendment. The Government must deal with that problem. On the one hand, the Government say that they would use such powers only on occasions when that would not affect individuals who would otherwise have been in a different position had the law as they thought it was continued. On the other, they are not prepared to include that provision in the Bill, as that is what refusing to accept the amendment means.
	With cunning ingenuity, the Liberal Democrat spokesman has discovered a way through. If the Government say that they believe that the amendment is right, he says that he will be happy. Well, if the Government can say that the amendment is right while at the same time advising the House to vote against it, that seems a peculiar position. I would not advise the Minister to take that line. Only a Liberal Democrat could get himself into that position. Only the party that on one doorstep tells people that it believes in one thing, and on the next doorstep that

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the right hon. Gentleman of the nature of the amendment being considered.

John Gummer: I stand corrected.
	I return to the nature of the amendment and repeat that on this occasion the Liberal Democrat advice is that the Government should ask the House to vote against something that the Government say they believe in. That is a remarkable achievement and ought to be emphasised.

Lembit �pik: I recognise the intellectual genius of the right hon. Gentleman. He and I usually agree in the Chamber. Did he not hear my point about the difference of opinion between us? I suggested that I was persuaded that the amendment, were it adopted, would make the legislation difficult to apply. Therefore, while I am enjoying his contributionand were we on Just a Minute I would give him a pointdoes he accept that it is a judgment about what works as legislation that causes me to make this suggestion to the Minister? I have no difference of view with the right hon. Gentleman in the intent of his speech and the concerns of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield.

John Gummer: I am still bemused because the hon. Gentleman is now saying that were the amendment carried, the clause would be difficult to use. He therefore wants the Minister to say on the record that he accepts the amendment, so that, in his language, it could be used in court, but he does not want the Minister to include it in the Bill. If including it in the Bill would make the legislation difficult to use, how would such a statement by the Minister make it any easier to useor have I missed his point?

Lembit �pik: Yes, the right hon. Gentleman has missed it. There is no point in pursuing a dialogue with him any further, as it is for the Minister to explain. In my judgment, however, while Kingsland's amendment was a good descriptor of the intent of the legislation, it was not a well-phrased amendment.

John Gummer: I would therefore advise the hon. Gentleman to suggest something different. I suggest that he says to the Minister that he will vote against the Government upholding the amendment unless the Minister comes forward with a promise that he will find another form of words that enables the sense of my noble Friend Lord Kingsland's proposition to be maintained, but without the disadvantages that he asserts are there, about which the hon. Gentleman happens to agree. That would be a convenient way forward.
	I have one further comment to make. I do not believe that we should have any possibility of retrospective legislation. Certainly, retrospective legislation by Order in Council and Government fiat is never acceptable, even if it might be convenient. I wish the Government to consider the history of this House and our constitutional arrangements, and I point out that the strength of our defence against retrospective legislation distinguishes us from other countries. For that precise reason, we can say that the rule of law is more firmly rooted here than anywhere else.
	The Minister may think that this is a small matter, but it is in fact a most important principle. It would help him and us if he were to promise to produce a better form of Lord Kingsland's proposal so that this issue does not hold up the Bill. I am sorry that the Government produced the Bill and that they did not offer the choices publicly to the people of Wales. Instead, he and others have had furtive back-of-the-room discussions. He promised to do it in that way, however, and I would prefer to have the Bill in those circumstances than not to have it at all. In my view, however, he cannot have the Bill if he wants retrospectivity without protections, as he does at this moment.

Nick Ainger: I note that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) is fundamentally opposed to any retrospection in legislation. He also said, however, that the use of Orders in Council was a back-door method, a trick and so on. Let us consider how the process would work in principle.
	Were a measure identified as defective, or being used in a way that was ultra vires, the Assembly would have to propose an order that would come to this place for pre-legislative scrutiny. Once the measure had been scrutinisedI am sure that at that stage any individuals who might be affected by it would make their views knownit would have to return to the Assembly with any suggested amendments. The Assembly would have to abide by the European convention on human rights; it could then send the House of Commons a draft measure which would be debated in both Houses.
	Given all those checks and balances, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the proposal is intended only to correct any technical defects and deal with any issues that are ultra vires. I can also assure him, as did my noble Friend Lord Evans, that the Orders in Council and the ultimate Assembly measure could not overturn a court decision. I hope he appreciates that.
	What concerns everyoneI understand the concernis the possibility that, in principle, an individual's rights could be affected. Let us consider what has happened in Scotland. Since 1998 this provision has been used once to deal with an ultra vires issue, a technical defect in legislation passed in the Scottish Parliament. That is why we want the clauses to remain as they are.
	I hope I have been able to reassure the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) that the proposal is intended to deal with technical defects and issues that may turn out to be ultra vires, that there is no intention of using the procedure to overturn any court decision, and that the rights of the individual will be protected.

Lembit �pik: I am grateful for the Minister's reassurance. To save a bit of time, I ask him to confirm that as far as the Government are concerned, the measure must never be used
	to the detriment of those who have either benefited from or acted in reliance upon the state of the law before the retrospective Order is made.

Nick Ainger: I cannot use those terms, because it is not possible to use them. I can only tell the hon. Gentleman that the rights of the individual, about which everyone is concerned, will be protected by the very process of the Orders in Council. People are rightly concerned, but as I have said, the provision has been used only once in Scotland since 1998, and it is intended to deal with technical defects.
	I think that we have got hung up on the example given by Lord Kingsland. I do not know whether it is such a good example. I have responded to what he said about a bypass and compulsory purchase. There is no way in which an individual's rights would be overturned, and a demand be made that he pay back the money. The Government and the Assembly will certainly take the individual's rights into account, although there may well be rare occasions on which action must be taken for the sake of the wider public good.

Lembit �pik: rose

Nick Ainger: Let us talk about the reality. The provision will be used extremely rarely, and as I have said, individuals who may be affected will be able to make representations.

Lembit �pik: I suffered the most appalling attack from the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), an accidental defence of the Government. I sought no greater reward than a simple clarification using the words of Lord Kingsland. I hope that the Minister will not make me regret my experience of the slings and arrows from the Conservative Benches. I ask him what is so difficult about agreeing to what appears to be a common-sense form of wordsthe amendment proposed by Lord Kingslandto reassure us all that the legislation will never be used
	to the detriment of those who have either benefited from or acted in reliance upon the state of the law before the retrospective Order is made.
	That is not a difficult question.

Nick Ainger: I think I have given the hon. Gentleman the answer: it will not be used in those circumstances. That is not its purpose. The hon. Gentleman is well aware of the extensive process of consultation with the Assembly.

John Gummer: rose

Nick Ainger: I think I have responded to all the points that have been made, and I am conscious of the time.

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:
	 The House divided: Ayes 287, Noes 153.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 21 and 22 disagreed to.

Clause 103
	  
	Proposal for referendum by Assembly

Lords amendment: No. 18.

Peter Hain: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
	This amendment removes the Secretary of State's discretion over how and when to lay a draft referendum Order in Council before Parliament if the Assembly passed such a request on a two-thirds vote. The purpose of clause 103 is to ensure that the Secretary of State responds to a request from the Assembly within a proper time scale. It is right that such a request cannot simply be sat upon.
	The effect of this amendment, however, would be to compel the Secretary of State to lay a draft order before Parliament within 120 days. I recognise the concern that the Secretary of Stateperhaps one less charitable towards devolution than Ishould not be able to obstruct the will of the democratically elected Assembly and that for the Liberal Democrats, that is a particular point of principle. I understand that fully. The commitment of the Liberal Democrats to devolution and to primary powers for Wales is long established, and I fully understand the concern that a move to primary powers should not be frustrated by a hostile Secretary of State. I would not support that myself, but of course I am sympathetic to primary powers and always have been. However, if any Government were bent on frustrating the will of the Assembly, this amendment would not be enough to stop them.
	A hostile UK Government could always resort to primary legislation. After all, Parliament is sovereign. The real safeguardI know that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) has real concerns about this pointis political. Any governing party in London that sought, arbitrarily or on some point of dogma, to block a decision by two thirds of Assembly Members in Cardiff would pay a heavy political penalty. They would be run out of town, just as the Conservatives were in 1997 for similar behaviour.
	I respect the intentions of the Liberal Democrats and others who proposed the change, but I do not believe that this amendment will achieve the desired outcome as effectively as the Bill as it currently stands does. If a Secretary of State were wilfully to attempt to thwart the clear will of the elected representatives of the people of Wales, after a referendum request had been given full and detailed consideration by the Assembly, and approved by at least two thirds of Assembly Members, the consequences would be grave, both politically and constitutionally. There would be a real crisis and the Secretary of State would clearly be in the wrong.
	The Government's objection to this amendment is not because we wish to aggrandise the role of the Secretary of State. Nor do we wish to put in place some kind of mechanism for thwarting a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly. Indeed, I do not see a real difference of principle between the concerns expressed in the House of Lords and by the hon. Gentleman and other Liberal Democrats, and the Government's position. It is a question of how to achieve the same end, and we do not think that the amendment is constitutionally appropriate. I shall explain why.
	If an order is to be laid before Parliament, that is properly a matter for a Minister of the Crown. It would not be constitutionally appropriate for the Assembly to be able to force the Secretary of State to lay a draft order before Parliament, regardless of whether the Secretary of State was even ready to do so. The Secretary of State, as a member of Her Majesty's Government, cannot be accountable both to Parliament and to the Assembly. The Secretary of Statefor that matter, any Minister of the Crownis accountable to this House and to Parliament. He cannot at the same time be accountable to an Assembly. That is the clear issue at stake. However, the intention of this provision is not to create a new roadblock. As I have said, the Secretary of State would be likely to face irresistible pressure to lay the Order in Council. Nonetheless, the Government believe that it is important to maintain proper lines of constitutional accountability.
	There are also genuine practical reasons why the Secretary of State should not be constrained to lay a draft order within 120 days. He or she would still have to comply with the requirements of clause 102 before doing so, including the preparation of the draft order itself and a statutory consultationa point made very persuasively by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy). The draft order would have to be laid before the Assembly before it was laid before Parliament. The amendment would leave no scope whatsoever to alter that time scale, should it not prove possible to complete all those steps within 120 days. The amendment does not take account of those practical considerations, of the requirements of clause 102 or of the obvious point about parliamentary sovereignty and accountability. I repeat that the Secretary of State is accountable to Parliament, not to the Assembly, although I would certainly want to act in keeping with the wishes of a two-thirds majority of the Assembly.

Lembit �pik: I have listened to the Secretary of State's comments with great interest and I acknowledge that he is genuinely attempting to acknowledge the concerns as highlighted by my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the other place and others. To an extent, his remarks have been reassuring and helpful. However, he has not answered the underlying question. Why not give the full authority to call and plan a referendum to the Welsh Assembly? Why does the Secretary of State need to have any role in that procedure? I understand that this Secretary of State thinks that that is necessary, but I would be interested to know his rationale.

Peter Hain: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I appreciate the open-minded and constructive way in which he has sought a resolution to this and other outstanding points in a way that will allow the Bill to receive Royal Assent by the end of next Tuesday. If primary powers were to be granted, it would be by decision of this Parliament. The Assembly cannot grab the initiative. It is for Parliament to decide whether it is right for the Assembly to have primary powers. I hope that all parties will help the Bill to receive Royal Assent through their response in the House of Lords next Monday and that they accept the principle that Parliament cannot accept the decision on calling a referendum to trigger the primary powersa fundamental stepbeing taken by anyone other than this House and the House of Lords.
	I am trying to be as helpful as I can be to the hon. Gentleman, because he has sought to improve the Bill, not to block it or wreck it, in great distinction from the behaviour of the Conservative party throughout its progress.
	Frankly, it would be an act of utter folly for anyone in the Secretary of State's position to attempt to obstruct the will of the people of Wales. Welsh voters simply would not tolerate it. Even a sceptical Secretary of Statewe had plenty of those before 1997would find it impossible to ignore such a request from the Assembly. The Government of the day would have to give the request the most sympathetic and serious consideration and ultimately, in my view, support. But it cannot be a rubber-stamp decision, for the constitutional reasons that I have explained.

Don Touhig: I am following my right hon. Friend's argument. Will he confirm that, under our constitutional arrangements, the Assembly cannot require this House to pass legislation? The Assembly may request that, but, at the end of the day, this Parliament of the United Kingdom holds the ultimate responsibility for law making in this land and only this Parliament can grant full powers to the Assembly.

Peter Hain: That is absolutely the case. I agree with my hon. Friend. I could not have put that better myself. That is the point that I have been seeking to make.
	I want to make a secondary point. Let us also remember that it will still be for the Secretary of State to consult on the draft order before the Assembly can vote on it. That is the sequence in which things happen. After an Assembly request, a draft order would be drawn up, and then the Assembly would consider the draft order and vote on it. It could be highly significant if it turns out that the Assembly itself is not happy with the content of the order. It will have started the clock ticking under the amendment120 daysand be unable to stop it, even if there was a process of interaction between the Assembly and Westminster on the detail of the order. The way in which we have framed things at least offers a sensible consultation process that could prove crucial in the final forming of the referendum, its wording and the process of the vote.

Lembit �pik: The Secretary of State is right to say that, throughout, the Liberal Democrats have sought to improve the Bill rather than to block it, and it is in that context that we have had the dialogue. In the context of what he is saying now, will he accept and register the fact that we still feel unease because we cannot be guaranteed that any future Secretary of States for Wales will necessarily be sympathetic to the referendum? How can he feel confident that the arrangement that he has constructively laid out will nevertheless not offer an opportunity for, for example, an anti-devolutionary Conservative Secretary of State for Wales to prevent the referendum from taking place, given that he is not giving us a time-limited period by which the Secretary of State must necessarily have laid the referendum before the House?

Peter Hain: The resolution of that problem does not lie in the Lords amendment, because even if the Lords amendment were carried, the Assembly could not compel Parliament to do anything. In the event of, as the hon. Gentleman puts it, an anti-devolution Conservative Secretary of StateI suppose that there might be one of those creatures around in the futurewanting to do that, there would be an almighty constitutional bust-up. It would not be in Westminster's interests, and I do not even think that it would be in the interests of an anti-devolution Conservative Secretary of State, to behave in that way. It would cause a real conflict. If a Conservative Government were determined not to grant primary powers despite the Bill, and not to call a referendum, that would be a political battle that had to be had. That relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen. Despite the clear route map that the Bill lays out towards primary powers via a referendumwhen it gets Royal Assent, that will be on the statute bookif a hostile Conservative Government, who were never going to give Wales or the Welsh Assembly what they wanted in those circumstances, were determined to stop that, Parliament would be sovereign. However, that would create not just the constitutional crisis that I described, but a political crisis for the Conservative party that would be extremely damaging to its future prospects in Wales.

Cheryl Gillan: I grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, because he is having his love-in and his little backroom deal with those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench [ Interruption. ] I am certainly not jealous; I do not want to be catching the Secretary of State's germs by getting that close to him [Hon. Members: Oh!] Well, I feel sorry for him. He is not feeling well, you know. Notwithstanding all those silver-tongued words and the ridiculous picture that is being painted of an anti-devolution Conservative Secretary of State for WalesI am glad that he acknowledges that there is going to be a Conservative Secretary of State for Walesthe issue with the amendment is all about his having proconsular powers so that he can control the timing of any referendum that is given to the people of Wales. Is that not the fact of the matter? If we do not allow the Lords amendment to go through, it means that he can act as the lord and master of Wales, calling the referendum whenever he wishes. That is the truth of the matter, because, of course, he and the First Minister and the Welsh Labour party are not in the business of calling a referendum that they may lose.

Peter Hain: I find that the most extraordinary of the contributions that the hon. Lady has made during the debate. She is somehow setting herself up as the defender of the Assembly against a reactionary Secretary of Stateif we were talking about a Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, we would have a reactionary Secretary of State by definition. To set herself up somehow as a champion of the Assembly against the rights and necessities of parliamentary sovereignty defies reason. I will not even attempt to respond any more, because she is smiling awayshe does not really believe what she said, any more than anybody else does. The way that she has behaved, which I regret, right the way through the course of the Bill is to seek to frustrate it at every point and to seek to oppose the greater devolution of power to the Welsh Assembly. I am proud of what the Bill does in relation to the greater devolution of power. I am also proud that it offers the prospect of primary powers for the Welsh Assembly if a referendum triggers them. If a referendum does that, there will be primary powers.

Paul Murphy: The Secretary of State has made the constitutional points extremely well and I agree with him. But does he agree that there is a political element to this matter, too? Any decision to go ahead with the referendum to seek primary powers for the Assembly would have to be the result of political consensus between the Government, Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly Government. That is important, as is any vote in the Assembly. The Assembly on its own does not reflect completely the views of the people of Wales, because we have a role in that as well as Members of the House of Commons. The political reality would be that there would have to be an agreement and a consensus between Parliament, Government and the Assembly.

Peter Hain: Again, I could not agree with my right hon. Friend more. He is absolutely spot on. The proposal in the Billbut certainly not the amendmentwould require active partnership between the Assembly Government and the United Kingdom Government. In a sense, it requires thatrather than an Assembly elected at a different stage in the electoral cycle ending up, as it were, being able to instruct this Parliament, which is elected at another stage in the electoral cycle.
	I think that we are seeing much fuss about nothing. Given the clear assurances that I have given to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire, I hope that the House will not divide on this matter and will accept the principles of the Bill and see it as a tremendous advance for Wales that will settle the whole issue for generations to come. Then, instead of constitutional matters, we can get on with debating better housing, better jobs, better health services, better education and all the other things that concern the people of Wales in their daily lives.

Cheryl Gillan: If there is a commitment to devolution, it is necessary to ask why the Secretary of State would want to exert a power of refusal that would put him on a collision course with the Assembly of the day about the very powers that his Government have brought forward. The Government's spokesman in the Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham, said that this was not an issue of seeking to aggrandise the Secretary of State, but that is the effect of the power and everyone in the House knows it.
	The power allows the Secretary of State both to delay and to obstruct the Assembly's wishes and process and to remove or delay the ability of both Houses of Parliament to have a say in the matter. After two thirds of the democratically elected Assembly had voted in favour of holding a referendum on part 4 powers, why would the Secretary of State wish to act as a road block to such a provision receiving consideration in the House?
	The whole process is fairly tortuous, but as I understand it, if the requisite two thirds of Assembly Members voted to pass a resolution in favour of a referendum, the First Minister would have to give notice of the resolution to the Secretary of State. Within 120 days of that, the Secretary of State must
	lay a draft of a statutory instrument containing an Order in Council...before each House of Parliament.
	If the order was passed, a referendum would be held to decide whether the part 4 provisions would come into force. However, if the Lords amendment is not allowed to stand, the Secretary of State will be able unilaterally to give notice in writing to the First Minister that he refuses to lay an order and merely give his reasons. The order simply would not have to be laid and the Secretary of State could block the process from reaching Parliament.
	During the debate in another place, Lord Kingsland [Interruption.] Hon. Members should listen to this. Lord Kingsland said:
	The real shift in power is from this Parliament to the Executive and the Secretary of State. [ Official Report, House of Lords, 28 June 2006; Vol. 683, c. 1237.]
	And a shift of power it is. The provision places the Secretary of State in a proconsular position over Walesas the lord and master. It interposes a single member of the Executive between the Assembly's decision and the order resulting from that decision reaching Parliament for a vote. The process certainly does not square with the Government's response to the House of Lords Select Committee on the constitution, in which they said:
	The Government agrees that this is a matter for Parliament to decide,
	because the Secretary of State is placing himself in the dominant position.
	The Bill has been characterised by the ingenuity that has enabled the Secretary of State to say one thing in Cardiff and another in Westminster. The provision, like the part 3 powers, gives the Secretary of State the opportunity to say pompously in Cardiff that he is proudly enshrining in legislation for the very first time the possibility of full law-making powers, while saying here that he has put a provision in the Bill to stop a referendum from being held if that does not suit him, or if he does not like the timing. In other words, he is saying here that he will not let the Assembly dictate to him.
	Rhodri Morganthe First Ministerthe Secretary of State and Welsh Labour are not in the business of calling a referendum that they are going to lose, so the Secretary of State has taken a power that will allow him to block that. The Conservative party has made the decision to support a Welsh Assembly that works for the people of Wales. We will do that in a straightforward manner, not with weasel-like
	 It being three hours after the commencement of proceedings, Mr. Deputy Speaker  put the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to Order [this day]

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:
	 The House divided: Ayes 294, Noes 189.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker then proceeded to put the remaining Questions required to be put at that hour.
	 Lords amendment No. 4 disagreed to.
	 Government amendment (a) in lieu thereof agreed to.
	 Lords amendment No. 5 disagreed to.
	 Government amendments (a) to (d) in lieu thereof agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 6 to 9 disagreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 19 and 20 disagreed to.
	 Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 6 to 9, 19 and 20 agreed to.
	 Remaining Lords amendments agreed to.
	Committee appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to certain of their amendments to the Bill: Nick Ainger, Mrs. Cheryl Gillan, Huw Irranca-Davies, Lembit pik and Chris Ruane; Nick Ainger to be the Chairman of the Committee; Three to be the quorum of the Committee. [Huw Irranca-Davies.]
	 To withdraw immediately.
	 Reasons for disagreeing to certain Lords amendments reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.

Public Accounts

Edward Leigh: I beg to move,
	That this House takes note of the 4th, the 7th to the 9th, the 12th to the 34th and the 36th to the 42nd Reports, and the Second Special Report from the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2005-06, and of the Treasury Minutes and the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel Memoranda on these Reports, Cm 6699, 6728, 6743, 6766, 6775, 6789, 6843, 6863 and 6884.
	It is a pleasure to welcome Members to the Public Accounts Committee debate, albeit a bit late. In view of the late hour, we should perhaps question whether our procedure in years gone by, when we had an annual debate, was not a better way of generating interest, but we can no doubt pursue that later through the usual channels. I am sure that the debate will be interesting. We will potentially be here until a quarter to midnightand why not? This is a very important subject.
	The last such debate, which took place in January, was considered worth while by Members in all parts of the House. We examined the Committee's work in driving value for money in public services, and the encouraging assurance was received from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury that the Committee would make an important contribution to the 2007 comprehensive spending review. Given its continuing preference for objectivity over partisanshipnot something for which this Chamber is generally notedthe incisiveness of our investigations and the quality of our reports, thanks to the help of the National Audit Office, I hope that today's debate will act as a powerful engine for both discussion and change within Whitehall.
	The Financial Secretary described as a tour de force the paper on delivering efficiency savings that we published before the last debate, and I understand that it is now widely used in Whitehall. I will quote widely from a report that we published only today, entitled Delivering High Quality Public Services for all. I hope that it, like the last generic report, will be widely used in Whitehall.
	I am of course proud to be the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, which is the oldest Committee in Parliament. Until recently, we thought that it was set up by Gladstone in the 1860s, but I have done some research and I found that a Public Accounts Committee met as long ago as the 17th century. For instance, in 1690 the Public Accounts Committee, which, I am afraid to say, was not friendly to the regime of James III regret that, as a Jacobitereported that:
	The ships built, rebuilt and repaired by these commissioners were fully and well performed, and the buildings and other works by them erected and made during the continuation of the same commission were done with great exactness, sufficiency and frugality of expense in the managery and conduct thereof.
	I have searched for a Treasury minute in reply to that excellent report, but I have not found one. I am sure that that incompetence is entirely due to the current Treasury teamthree and a half centuries later and we are still waiting for a reply to the PAC report of 1690.

Ian Davidson: I rise because the hon. Gentleman mentioned 1690. Is he aware that many of my constituents demonstrate regularly to celebrate an event that took place in that yearindeed, many demonstrate against events that took place in that yearbut that none of them demonstrates to celebrate the anniversary of the PAC?

Edward Leigh: Well, we have obviously failed to make our mark. But of course, we live nowadays in times when venality is not an issue in public life, is it? The Committee to which I referred earlier looked at the affairs of Pepys's friend Richard Cooling, the Lord Chamberlain's secretary, no less, who
	told us his horse was a bribe, and his boots a bribe; and told us he was made up of bribes...and that he makes every sort of tradesman to bribe him; and invited me home to his house to taste of his bribe-wine.
	That is one of the problems that that Committee dealt with.
	Given that the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) takes an interest in the Royal family, I shall point out another such debate that I found. The Committee took place on the Floor of the Whole House and, according to the journal of the House of Commons,
	Some expressions were frequently used which seemed to glance at the licence and disorders and extravagant expense of that place
	the court
	not without some reflections which, aimed at the lady
	I do not know who she is
	and the exorbitant power exercised by her and this imperious way of proceeding, confirmed those in their wariness who had no mind to oppose or contradict the party that they would and meant should prevail.
	So we think that the Public Accounts Committee has been holding the court and the Government to account for the best part of three or four centuries, and we continue to do so.
	For instance, only this year we published 31 reportsat least twice as many as any other Committeeon a range of vital issues since the last debate. We found, to take one example, that as of September 2005, one third of our armed forces were not as ready as they should have been, and we called on the Ministry of Defence to clarify its plans for bringing the armed forces back up to required readiness. A plainly ridiculous situation was also uncovered whereby massive overpayments were an inherent part of the tax credit system. In short, whoever designed the schemeperhaps it was the Treasury, although I do not knowknew that it would lead to overpayments before they even introduced it. This created a worrying situation for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable families who had to find money to finance repayments.
	It has to be said that many people have been helped by tax credits, and I acknowledge that. However, many families have been made sick with worry about the need to pay back money that they do not have money that they have been given and have now spent. With more than 1 billion lost through claimant error and fraud in 2003-04 alone, money is leaking from the tax credit system faster than the water from London's antiquated pipes.
	We have also concluded that consular service staff have shown tremendous dedication and determination in helping British nationals in distress, and we pay tribute to them. That is particularly in relation to the nine major overseas emergencies of 2005. In the same report we recognise also the steps that have been taken by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to improve its emergency plans, especially in the light of its experience during the tsunami, when its call-handling system was overwhelmed.
	We are also, I am afraid to say, the Public Accounts Committee for Northern Ireland while Stormont is suspended. We took evidence from the Department of the Environment on the problems that had been developing in implementing a waste management strategy for Northern Ireland. In particular, we took the Department to task for failing to show strong leadership under the greening Government initiative. It responded by agreeing to establish waste reduction and recycling targets equivalent to its Westminster counterparts.
	We found again and again that the quality of governance in Northern Ireland has been below par compared to the rest of the United Kingdom. It is a hugely over-governed part of the United Kingdom and perhaps too much emphasis, understandably, has been placed on peace and security, and not enough on good governance. I was talking to a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office this evening, who assures me that that is now changing and that the Department is trying to achieve the same sort of value-for-money targets in Northern Ireland that have been the norm in the rest of the United Kingdom. That is to be welcomed. I hope that the Treasury will keep a close eye on what is happening there.
	A number of our findings have reached the very top of the news agenda. Even today, I think that we might be making the news. April was the Committee's highest-profile month given the number of articles published. This was largely the result of revelations regarding foreign national criminals. According to  The Daily Telegraph,
	this tale of incompetence has come to light only because of the assiduity
	those are the words that are written above the door of the Committee's Chairman, apparently put there by Gladstone
	of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, one of the few agents of public accountability we have left in our neutered democracy.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon)I pay tribute to himwas rightly afforded special praise for his persistent pressing on this issue, not least by Ministers, who congratulated him. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), was a big enough man to acknowledge the role played by my hon. Friend. When people say that the only route that is worth while in this place is to be either a Minister or a shadow spokesman, they should bear in mind my hon. Friend, who has devoted his parliamentary years to serving on a Select Committee. That shows what can be achieved on Select Committees. We are grateful to him.
	Other reports that we have published have received a large amount of publicity. One such report is the cancer plan. Our reports on health are always of great interest. We have produced reports on our railway stations, the Diana fountain and many other matters. How instructive it is in our celebrity-obsessed society that we can waste billions on fraud and error in the Department for Work and Pensions, but if we are lucky our report will reach page 15 of the  Financial Times. If we talk about a paltry 1 million or 2 million wasted on a concrete memorial in Hyde park, we have wall-to-wall coverage in all the newspapers. That is something that we have to live with.
	I have been especially encouraged by the Government's acceptance of the Committee's recommendations. The Department of Health accepted the need to provide all cancer patients with a formal assessment of the support that they need to manage the pain, stress, and anxiety caused by their cancer. The Department for Education and Skills agreed to review the curriculum after we recommended that school lessons be made more relevant to pupils who were reluctant to attend school.
	In all, 94 per cent. of the Committee's recommendations were accepted by the Government. I am delighted to pay tribute to the Treasury and the Treasury minutes in ensuring such a high strike rate. But we have to ensure that our recommendations are not just accepted but implemented, and we want to do more work with the NAO on that.
	We would not be influential were it not for the quality and dedication of the Committee's members and staff. I pay tribute to Mr. Nick Wright and his colleagues for all the work that they do. I thank those who have left the Committee since the last debatethe hon. Members for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams), for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael). I also welcome those who have since joinedthe hon. Members for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig), for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and for Southport (Dr. Pugh). All the other existing members continue to work hard, to hold the Government to account and they all deserve congratulation, and I give it.
	I also pass on the Committee's regards to all its staff and their continuing commitment to the Committee's work, and of course, and not least, to the NAO, whose professionalism and impartiality make our work possible. One of my ambitions in the time left to me serving on the Liaison Committee and chairing this Committee is to see other Select Committees make more use of the NAO. In the past, there has been a tendency for the PAC to be too possessive about the NAO, and we should use it more as a resource to help other Committees hold Government to account, particularly on the estimates and expenditure account side.
	The trouble is that the scope of the Committee's work is so wide-ranging that I could just go around a series of disjointed issues, but one issue in particular stands out. As the Government look forward to the 2007 comprehensive spending review, so the debate on the effectiveness of increased spending on public services in recent years gathers pace. This is now central to our democracy, particularly as apparently the two parties are growing closer in ideology and there is more and more emphasis on how to deliver more efficient public services, given the increased resources that are devoted to that.
	To contribute to that debate, I want to discuss the extent to which increased investment in public services is meeting what should be the most important test of its effectiveness: its impact on the end usersuch an obvious remark, but something that may not always be at the forefront of our minds in political debate. I want to highlight six key ingredients of user satisfaction with public services. They are all very topical and they are all contained in the 63rd report that we published only this morning. Those six key ingredients indicate where public money has been spent well, and where there is still some way to go. They feed, I hopeand I hope that the Minister will respond to thisthe Government's fundamental review of public spending priorities.
	I start by quoting paragraph 18 of the report. It is a significant paragraph and I hope that the Government take note of it. Bear in mind that this is an all-party report, agreed by 15 Members of the House of Commons. It states:
	Public bodies also need to consider how the structure of organisations can affect the planning and delivery of services. The public sector becomes more complex as it grows in size, as the commissioning of new projects and services leads to overlap between departments. For example, if a new agency is created to tackle childhood obesity, headed by a government-appointed 'tsar' and equipped with a small office staff, its powers and field of responsibility will overlap with those of other departments, such as the Department of Health, local education and strategic health authorities. As the agency becomes embedded within the overall government framework, its interaction with these other departments will evolve to 'iron out' overlapping provision, but there will nevertheless be a time period in which less-efficient practices occur. The more rapidly the government decides to expand the public sector the more likely this is to occur. Political pressure to establish or expand the public provision of a service as quickly as possible will increase the likelihood of such projects being ill-defined and poorly planned, wasting public money in the process and possibly slowing down improvements.
	I particularly recommend that paragraph to the Minister.
	Let me quickly go over the tests. First, the most basic requirement of a public service is that it should be accessible, but too often that is not the case. The Committee uncovered a wide geographical variation in the use of National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence-approved cancer drugs, including those for breast cancer, across the countryagain, there was a lot of publicity and public interest. We found that people in some less affluent parts of the countrytypically the northmay lose out when it comes to cancer care, because cancer networks in some deprived areas lack comprehensive service plans.
	Access to public services can also be affected by complexity in how services are delivered. For example, complicated processes can deter people from claiming benefits. Language is another potential barrier preventing people from accessing public services, but it is an area in which the Government are making progress, which the Committee has acknowledged. Our report on adult literacy and numeracy highlighted progress in reaching those with language needs, thanks in part to the increased Skills for Life budget. There has been progress, but more can be done.
	Secondly, once demanded, public services should be delivered as promptly as possible. Failure to do so can cause inconvenience, hardship and disruption, and, at its most serious, put lives at risk. Over the years, the Committee has repeatedly highlighted the importance of getting it right first time in benefit decision making, which means making decisions quickly and accurately to guard against clogging up the system with appeals and revised benefit assessments.
	Thirdly, public services should respond to the needs of users, which is obvious but is not always done. Failure to take into account what people want can result in unsuitable services that cause inconvenience, dissatisfaction and, sometimes, hardship for users. To design services around the needs of users, providers must first have a thorough understanding of what users want. Incidentally, all these points are illustrated by practical examples in the report, but there is no time to go through them now.
	Fourthly, public services will ultimately fall short of expectations if users and providers fail to communicate effectively with each other. Call centres are one increasingly common way for people to communicate with public bodies, but they are also an increasingly common cause of frustration and dissatisfaction with public services. Our investigation of tax assessment found that some staff on telephone helplines lack the detailed knowledge to respond consistently and accurately to inquiries.
	Fifthly, public services need to set and meet high standards. One way to improve the quality of public services is to introduce appropriate incentives and targets. For example, the Committee recommended the greater use of financial penalties to drive up the standard of facilities in Britain's railway stations. I was so appalled by the disgusting state of Market Rasen station in my constituency that I brought my own incriminating photographs to the hearing, where a panoply of highly paid members of the railway establishment were in front of the Committee. My photos of waiting room graffiti captured the squalor pretty well and, although I do not have the photographic genius of Robert Capa or the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), they made a difference and things have changed. Standards in public services can also be improved by involving public service providers that are capable of meeting the diverse needs of different groups in society.
	Finally, even if standards are world class, people will not be happy if services cost what they consider to be too much. As a consequence, providers must publish, publicise and contain costs. And users of services need to know about the costs that they will incur. People must be told how much they will pay when, for example, they contact a public service by telephone. It is also important that money is not wasted. Some money never makes it to a programme's front line, because it is swallowed up in management costs. For example, about one third of Learn direct funding went on overheads in 2004-05, and the Committee urged UFIthe University for Industryto channel that money towards learners instead.
	By outlining the Committee's recent findings on users' experiences of public servicessome positive, some negative and some highlighting areas for improvementI hope that we have contributed to the debate on the effectiveness of increased spending on public services, which is helping to inform the Financial Secretary's work on the comprehensive spending review.
	In my final few minutes, I want to move on to explore some important developments in other aspects of the stewardship of public money. In January, the Comptroller and Auditor General issued a disclaimer on the Home Office accounts, which were not only riddled with errors but delivered too late for his staff to audit in time. Such a disclaimer is virtually unprecedented in relation to a great Department of State. It is extraordinary, not to mention deeply concerning, that such an organisation should fail so spectacularly to render its accounts to Parliament.
	The Home Office invited yet more accusations of incompetence following the Committee's inquiry into returning failed asylum applicants. The sheer perseverance of the Committee, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, brought this to light. We not only highlighted a serious immediate threat to the well-being of the public but pointed to what the former Home Secretary was compelled to describe as a serious systemic failure in his Department's ability to understand what was happening with foreign national criminals. The Government aim to address the clear need to improve the performance of Departments for their departmental capability reviews. I look forward to assessing those reviews and their implementation in the coming weeks and months.
	We welcome the other developments that will give the Comptroller and Auditor General more opportunities to ensure the wise spending of the nation's money. It is encouraging that HM Treasury has asked the National Audit Office to review the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness with which the Financial Services Authority has used its resources when discharging its statutory functions.
	We note the progress of the Company Law Reform Bill, which will give the Comptroller and Auditor General the right to audit non-departmental public bodies that are companies. We are pleased to see the continuing progress of the National Lottery Bill, which will finally give the CAG access to the information that the National Lottery Commission holds for the purpose of vetting people involved in running the national lottery.
	We always return to the BBC in these debatesand why not? The Committee would like assurances regarding the CAG's access to the BBC and to central Government money channelled through local government. It is with great interest that I note the discussions between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the NAO regarding the establishment of a baseline against which to judge the BBC's future efficiency programme. I welcome the Government's recognition that the NAO should have an expanded role in assessing the BBC's value for money, but I urge them to do more to enhance parliamentary scrutiny of the BBC. It is ludicrous that the CAG should not have freedom to select the topics that he wishes to examine. We cannot have a situation whereby what is in effect a public body is spending 3 billion-worth of public money, and the main external auditor on the behalf of the taxpayerthe CAGhas to go cap in hand to the BBC to agree a programme of investigation. He should have the right to go where he wants. As the Government introduce different funding mechanisms for local government through local area agreements, it is imperative that proper parliamentary accountability of these funds remains.
	Following the Committee's recent visit to Washington DC, where Congressmen have far more power over appropriation than we do, it is clear that there is scope to improve parliamentary scrutiny of Government spending plans. We wrote as a Committee to the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, the Father of the House, who is also a member of our CommitteeI pay tribute to his work on itproposing that departmental Select Committees devote more time to the scrutiny of expenditure plans. We also drew his attention to the willingness of the NAO to provide support for that. We discussed this in the Liaison Committee last weekI hope that I am not giving anything awayand interest was expressed. The Hansard Society has published a report on the subject, and we have our own PAC report on it. I agree that we will neveror not rapidlymove to a situation whereby we are like Congress, where the President proposes but ultimately Congress disposes, with line- by-line control of the budget.
	Nevertheless, there must be some progress towards returning to Parliament's traditional role. I cited the 17th century, when this sort of debate produced a civil war. Nowadays there is virtually no line-by-line scrutiny of the estimates. That is a worrying shortfall in what Parliament's work should be about. If we can provide other Select Committees with more help from the NAO, we will not magically persuade the Government suddenly to give Select Committees line-by-line procurement powers. However, if they can at least set up the processes and have the knowledge, it might be possible for the Government, or a future Government, to start creating more interest in the appropriation procedure and business. Parliament is fundamentally about that and was set up to perform that function.
	I have given a brief outline of the Committee's valuable and challenging work in the past six months. I expect our work in the next six months to be just as challenging and, I hope, valuable, with investigations into a wide range of topical issues, including NHS financial management.

David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman has led the Public Accounts Committee with distinction, and some of the reports satisfied Parliament about the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of public expenditure in five sixths of the United Kingdomthe country of England. Does he believe that he has adequate powers to focus on the public expenditure that is funded by the generous Barnett formula in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Edward Leigh: I may have personal views, but I am supposed to express those of the Committee. I am told that there is an adequate Public Accounts Committee in Scotland and similar mechanisms in Wales.

Jim Devine: The Public Accounts Committee in Scotland is good. When the Conservative party was in power, it introduced the internal market into the Scottish health service. It surprises me that Public Accounts Committee reports do not mention the public sector's purchasing power. There were 32 different prices for cornflakes, and the Conservative Government extended that to beds, bandages and breakages. The internal market in the health service gave the private sector a licence to print money. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the public sector should standardise its purchasing policies, whether in local government or the health service, for chairs, beds, pens, tables and so on?

Edward Leigh: Of course I agree. I give the Government credit for setting up the Office of Government Commerce. There has not been time to deal with that vital issue in my few remarks but we all agree with the hon. Gentleman that what he outlines is an extraordinarily important part of saving public money, and that a great deal of progress remains to be made.
	In the next six months, we shall consider NHS financial management, the Rural Payments Agency, including the single payment scheme, which had all sorts of problems, and the Child Support Agency. Our distinguished Committee has been a force in ensuring that taxpayers' money is spent wisely and effectively. I commend its work to the House.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: One of the frustrating aspects of the Committee's work is the time lag between our hearing, the subsequent reports and the Treasury's response. In January, when Public Accounts Committee reports were previously debated on the Floor of the House, I found myself, as a new member of the Committee, in an interesting position because I had not participated in any of the hearings on the reports that we were discussing.
	Today, however, I have seen the process through with many of the reports, from the initial National Audit Office report, through the PAC evidence sessions, to the publication of the report and the Treasury response. It helps when we see the whole picture. However, it requires an efficient filing system because it is impossible to retain in one's head the burning issues that we discuss at hearings. If one does not keep a good record in notes, the issues can get lost in the mists of time, because we meet twice a week to consider a most diverse range of subjectsunlike other Select Committees, which, as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) said, home in on a specific aspect of a particular Department and spend several weeks delving into minute detail.
	We, on the other hand, fly at 30,000 ft, twice a week diving down and swooping back up to move to the next Department and the next subject. Although that approach means that we cover much ground, it sometimes feels a bit superficial. I am pleased that, in the past year, we have spent some deliberative time outside hearings, trying to pull together some common themes. I should like us to do more of that.
	Our most recent session, when we reviewed the work programme of the National Audit Office for the next couple of years with Sir John Bourn, was most valuable. Our work is a partnership with the NAO. I particularly welcome the new appendix to that report, which looked at the risk factors involved in the various areas that the NAO was considering.
	It is easy for us to get on our hobby horses when deciding what issues we shall hold hearings on. We all have our pet projects and our pet Departments. However, our time is limited, and we should prioritise our hearings to cover the areas of highest risk. Time and again, we criticise Departments for not taking a risk-based approach, so it is only right that we too should take such an approach to our work.
	While reviewing our work over the past six months, I should like to pay tribute to the Chair of our Committee, the hon. Member for Gainsborough, who has, as ever, been assiduous, courteous and charming in his chairmanship. I would also like to thank Nick Wright for his invaluable help as our Committee Clerk, and all the staff at the NAO.
	We have a wealth of reports before us today demonstrating the sheer scope of our work, which reaches into every Department, enabling us to fulfil our function of ensuring that the taxpayer is getting value for money, exposing weaknesses and recommending improvements in the processbut of course not the policyof government. As a member of the party that is in government, I see my role as that of a critical friend. I of course believe that the policy is right; I therefore have a vested interest in making sure that it is delivered effectively. Because of that, I want to focus on two reports today. The first is the 17th report, Achieving value for money in the delivery of public services, from which I want to pick up on the theme of complexity, and move on to the 36th report, entitled Tackling the complexity of the benefits system.
	Before I home in on those reports, however, I want to say a few words about the Committee's visit to Washington and Boston earlier this year. Once again, I must thank the Committee staff, particularly Nick Wright and Christine Randall, who accompanied us and made sure that we were all in the right place at the right time, even the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), who usually managed to be last. It was interesting to see the different approach taken to financial oversight there. In many ways, that reflected the different structure of a separately elected President and his Executive, who can be in conflict with the separately elected Congress. That is all very different from our parliamentary system, in which the Executive derive their power from their majority in Parliament.
	It would not be easy to replicate the financial scrutiny and overview of the American system, but like the hon. Member for Gainsborough, I certainly came away thinking that there could be improvements in the way in which Parliament undertakes financial scrutiny of future expenditure plans. I am looking forward to the responses from the Liaison Committee, the Modernisation Committee and the Public Accounts Commission to the proposals put forward by our Chair for departmental Select Committees to devote more time to the scrutiny of expenditure plans.
	I shall move on to the two reports on which I want to focus today. The 17th report, Achieving value for money in the delivery of public services, is fundamental to our work in the Public Accounts Committee. Incidentally, I believe that the report that was published today is also fundamental, but I understand that it is outside the scope of the motion, so I shall not refer to it. The 17th report is an example of how we have consciously stepped outside our role of diving in from 30,000 ft and tried to draw together wider themes over a 10-year period. We deliberately chose a 10-year period so that the report would straddle different Governments and phases of government.
	One of the encouraging things to come out of the report is that the great majority of the Committee's recommendations over the years have been acted on. Despite that, however, it is disappointing to note that lessons do not seem to have been learned across other Departments, as the same themes come through in different reports. Seven factors have been identified as needing greater progress, but I shall concentrate on just three: the lack of adequate project management; the fact that there are not enough pilot schemes prior to implementation; and the need to reduce complexity and bureaucracy.
	In our last debate in January, I drew attention to the importance of project management, particularly in regard to Ministry of Defence major projects. That is reinforced in this report, which highlights the MOD support vehicle projects, in which the Department decided to proceed without a formal assessment phase, resulting in a slippage of 19 months. This was not because the Department lacked a proper procedure. The smart acquisition procedures were in place; they were simply not acted on.
	There is an example in the report from my own constituency. The Home Office had allocated funding to the Portsmouth Partnership for a CCTV and automatic number plate recognition system in December 2002, but required the funds to be spent by the year's end. The subsequent rushed procurement and lack of testing meant that the new systems were not operational until August 2003. There needs to be recognition at departmental level of the practicalities involved in implementing recommendations on the ground.
	When we look at pilot projects we see in many reports that either they have not been used or, if they have been used, lessons have not been learned from them. Pilot schemes are crucial for picking up practical issues that may not be apparent in the design stage, but they are of no use if the results are ignored.

John Pugh: The hon. Lady is being a little unkind to the Government. Why, only today, they have decided on a pilot scheme for home information packs, rather than going ahead with the real thing! Is that not learning a lesson?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I quite agree that there are instances of pilot projects working well. There is an example in one of our reports of good practice in the Treasury building project, demonstrating how advance planning can reduce risk. I am saying that there have been instances where pilot projects have not worked very well or where lessons have not been learned. If we look at the potential schemes for individual learning accounts in the Department for Education and Skills, we see that during the pilot stage none of the schemes worked, so a completely different scheme was implemented which had no testing at all and was rushed through, resulting in a system prone to fraud which cost the taxpayer about 67 million.
	Moving on to reducing complexity and bureaucracy, we come up against an inevitable tension between the Government policy of targeting public money at those most in need and the inevitable complexity that that brings. Sometimes the complexity and bureaucracy go beyond that tension, and our report highlights the South East England Development Agency in my region, where there were more than 40 different funding streams, each with separate monitoring and evaluation criteria. That led to SEEDA having to set up a brand new initiative just to help applicants wade through the process.
	Our 36th report focused on complexity in the benefits system. As I said, complexity is inevitable when one targets benefits as well as preventing fraud and abuse and making sure that public money goes where it is most needed. The immediate response is, We must simplify things, but as our report points out, simplification is not an easy option, and it means a trade-off with affordability, fairness and targeting. That is not to say that there is not much more that can be done.
	Let us consider the letters sent out by the DWP. Our report highlighted the difficulties that people have had with written communications, as well as the fact that nothing has improved much over the past six years. I am sure that I am not alone in having constituents at my advice centre who have struggled through the complexity of applying for the benefits to which they are entitled, only, when they get those benefits, to receive letters that they simply do not understand.

Sadiq Khan: Was my hon. Friend surprised by the evidence that we received that potential recipients of benefits which other Departments were implementing would not receive that advice because it was a DWP project, rather than taking a holistic approach, with people attending advice sessions at which they could receive advice from different Departments, which seems the obvious thing to do?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I entirely agree, and that need for a holistic approach came through in the briefings that we received from Citizens Advice and the Child Poverty Action Group.

Greg Clark: I agree with the hon. Lady that the complexity of the benefits system is to a certain extent inevitable if there is targeting, but one of the consequences is that organisations such as Citizens Advice have a great increase in their work load. Does she agree that it would be reasonable, in introducing changes to the benefits system, to give some resource to the Citizens Advice to enable it to cope with the inevitable increase in its work load?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I know from when I was a councillor that citizens advice bureaux get considerable resources through service level agreements with local authorities. They do a tremendous amount of work. We should take note when Citizens Advice tells us of the problems that it has. In 2003-04, citizens advice bureaux dealt with 1.3 million cases relating to benefits and tax credits. Citizens Advice acknowledges that some progress has been made, but says that it is still seeing too many people who are missing out on the money to which they are entitled.
	Similarly, the Child Poverty Action Group acknowledges the inherent complexity in targeting benefits, but points out that it is made worse by poor delivery, which the Department can do something about. In our report we highlight the importance of highly skilled, trained staff, and at our hearing I asked the permanent secretary why a human being could not review the computer-generated letters that went out and, if necessary, write an explanation on the bottom in plain English. If a letter lists all the benefits to which one could be entitled, but it actually means that one is not going to get any money, it would be a lot easier to understand if that were written on the bottom.
	Of course, the use of IT, telephone and other communication technologies will aid simplification. We must be aware, however, that some people will always need face-to-face advice, and we must make sure that our staff have adequate training to do that.

Greg Clark: Given the importance of preserving that human face, does the hon. Lady share my concern that the savings proposed from front-line staff at the Benefits Agency should not go too far too quickly? We should not throw people on the mercy of a complex computer system without a sufficient number of staff to guide them through that complexity.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: It is important that we make sure that the IT systems are in place first, but I would be the last to say that we should not make savings and process benefits more efficiently. We must, however, put the user at the forefront. Efficiency savings and simplification must be delivered for the benefit of the user, and not necessarily for the benefit of the Department. The user must come first. Claimants and applicants must get the benefits of the simplification.
	The most important outcome of the inquiry into the complexity of benefits is the setting up of the simplification team, which will develop the simplification strategy and then be able to challenge all new policy proposals on the grounds of complexity. At our hearing, I was encouraged when the permanent secretary said that he hoped to come back in one year and show a demonstrable difference in the level of complexity. I was dubious, however, about how that would be possible, when a clear set of performance indicators had not yet been devised. I was not quite sure how that improvement would be demonstrated. Sadly that was borne out in the Treasury response:
	Because of the difficulties with developing such a measure, the Department cannot commit at this stage to producing one by 2007.
	However, I am pleased that the Department nevertheless undertakes to keep the Committee informed of progress.
	Measurement of progress brings me back to our visit to the USA. For me, one of the highlights of the trip was our visit to Harvard Business School and our opportunity to debate with four of its professors. It was a huge privilege to listen to them. I was especially interested in the concept of the value chain in delivering public services and how, all too often, we are focused just on inputs, activities and outputs, and we forget the next two items in the value chainoutcomes and impacts. I have no problem with targets. I come from an industry background where total quality management was the norm, and one of the first lessons in any quality system, whether Six Sigma, TQM or whatever is fashionable at the time, is that one must be able to measure.
	One must have a mechanism to show whether one is meeting one's defined standards. Delivering public services, however, is not the same as manufacturing widgets, and our standard must be more than just the measuring of inputs, activities and outputs. We must also have a means of assessing outcomes and impacts. The difficulty arises because those are often long-term outcomes and impacts, and the Government are under pressure to find ways in which to demonstrate progress quickly.
	Yesterday, I visited my out-of-hours GP service, which had failed on a measurement criterion to get overnight reports to the relevant GP by 8 am the next day. One might say that that was fair enough, but the fact that it had extended its service until 8 am and could not get reports to GPs by 8 am because patients were still being treated at that time had not been taken into account. Yes, it had failed on the raw output target, but it was delivering a better outcome.
	That brings me back to those Harvard professors. One concluded with a quote from Nietzsche:
	The most common form of human stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish.
	As members of the PAC, we should keep in mind what we are trying to accomplish. I hope that we will consider outcomes and impacts as well as inputs, activities and outputs when we scrutinise the cost-effectiveness of Government policy.

Richard Bacon: It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry). I, too, greatly enjoyed the visit to Harvard Business School and would commend it to anyone. I hope that before long the Government also go there and listen to the professors.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) referred to my role in the exposure of the foreign national prisoners scandal. I do not propose to say anything about that in this debate, but merely to make one comment about the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke). I consciously and deliberately did not call for his resignation over that matter, and I was sorry to see him go. Some may say that his departure became inevitable, but I continue to have a high regard for him and I think that what has happened in the Home Office since then demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than the issue of one Cabinet Minister. I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for the work that he did during his time at the Home Office. Oops, sorry, I did not mean to destroy your Cabinet career, is not necessarily the most welcome thing to hear from a parliamentary opponent, and that was not my intention. I can only repeat that I have a high regard for the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope that he will continue to make a contribution in this place.
	Nevertheless, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, there is a serious problem with the Home Office that goes well beyond one issue connected with the immigration and nationality directorate. My hon. Friend said that the Home Office had been unable to present a set of audited accounts to Parliament. There have been the most serious problems possible with the Home Office accounts. They were flagged up in a memorandum from the National Audit Office to the audit committee of the Home Office, entitled Home Office Resource Accounts 2004-05 Audit Update from the National Audit Office.
	I pay tribute to Mr. Darren Box, financial audit director at the National Audit Office, whose persistence caused the seriousness of the problems to come to light. His memorandum to the audit committee states
	At this stage we are contemplating a disclaimer opinion on the accounts on the grounds that fundamental control failures mean that we are unable to form an opinion on whether the accounts are true and fair and whether expenditure recorded in them is regular.
	The memo continues:
	The accounts display a very limited understanding of how different figures within financial statements relate to one another indicating skills and experience deficits within Accounts Branch.
	The accounts showed little evidence of meaningful management review at any level.
	With the notable exception of IND, there is no evidence of the accounts production process being subject to any proper project management disciplines.
	Issues raised in our previous management letters have not been actioned and appear not to have been disseminated to relevant staff.
	Later, under the heading Control Weaknesses, the memo states:
	In addition to late and poor quality financial statements, serious control weaknesses have also been identified during the audit. The weaknesses include:
	IT Controls: There is a lack of security within key IT applications through the absence of unique identification for system administrators, no audit trails, weaknesses in control over standing data
	and so forth.
	The memo adds:
	Bank reconciliations are the most fundamental of all accounting controls as they enable payment, receipts and cash balances to be validated to an external source and provide assurance about debtor and creditor balances. Due to difficulties in implementing the Adelphi accounting system, the Home Office has been unable to reconcile its cash at bank position.
	That bears repetitionthe Home Office has been unable to reconcile its cash at bank position.
	Bank reconciliations are fundamental. They are an essential control over cash to ensure that income and payments recorded in any organisation's bank account match its accounting records. Matching also provides assurance about debtor and creditor balancesin other words, amounts owed to and by a Departmentand can help to prevent and detect fraud and error. What was worse was that the Home Office had not even realised that failure to reconcile cash fully could ultimately undermine its ability to provide Parliament with fully audited accounts.
	The memo goes into further detail about the Adelphi accounting system, stating:
	A further cause for concern has arisen from our review of Adelphi transaction data. It took six months for the Home Office to supply us with transaction data that we were able to reconcile successfully to the Adelphi general ledger. However, when the gross transaction value of debits and credits within this data was totalled, they each amounted to some 26,527,108,436,994, almost 2,000 times higher than the Home Office's gross expenditure for 2004-05 and approximately one and a half times higher than the estimated GDP of the entire planet. This suggests that something has gone seriously awry...We have yet to receive an explanation for what has happened... Collectively, these control weaknesses expose the Home Office to a high risk of fraud, irregularity, poor value for money and waste in its financial operations.

David Taylor: Given that the Home Office is feeling its way through this incoherent and inaccurate maze of figures that underpin its performance and direction, can the hon. Gentleman suggest why it is so certain that savings that are available under contestability and outsourcing are sufficient to apply those two techniques on a grand scale to the National Offender Management Service?

Richard Bacon: I do not think that I can. Many of the so-called savings to be found under various aspects of Government efficiency programmeshad we been in office, they would probably have been found under the James committee savingsare very questionable. A different example, with which the Financial Secretary will be only too familiar, is that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is busy sacking fraud staff, who were bringing in many hundreds of times their own salary in some cases, in order to meet rather spurious targets. However, I will not dwell on that.
	The result of all that activity was that the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, was unable to reach an opinion on the truth and fairness of the Home Office accounts for 2004-05, so he disclaimed an audit opinion. It is worth explaining what disclaiming means. A disclaimer is not the same as a qualified opinion. We are familiar with the idea of qualified opinionsfor example, because of concerns about fraud and error, there has been a qualified opinion on the Department for Work and Pensions' accounts since 1988, which specifies the particular aspects, such as housing benefit fraud, income support fraud or whatever, that are the subject of concern. The same happens with the European Court of Auditors in respect of EU accounts. However, that is not what I am talking about. This is Sir John Bourn, an Officer of the House, telling Parliament that he has no information at all with which to form a view. The accounts were presented to Parliament unaudited.
	Irrespective of whether we are talking about a public or a private sector organisation, that is an almost unbelievable state of affairs. It is hard to imagine any private sector organisationwhether it be a golf club or a multinational corporationfor which that would fail to lead to enormous consequences. The Home Office cannot say with any certainty how much it spent during the year, what debts it was owed and what it owed to others or what assets it owns. There is no assurance that all expenditure incurred during the year was in line with what Parliament authorised and financial information provided by the Home Office is unreliable. Those are the most basic failures of financial stewardship and control by the accounting officer who is legally responsible to Parliament to account for how moneys are spent.
	In that case, the accounting officer failed in his duty to Parliament and one might have thought that the person responsible would have been hauled over the coals, exposed and brought to the Bar of the House to explain himself. What actually happened, however, was that he was promoted to become Deputy Governor of the Bank of England in charge of financial stability in the banking system, which, if nothing else, at least shows that the people who run the country still have a sense of humour.
	What I would like to know is where the Treasury is in all that. The NAO memo goes on to state that
	late qualified accounts are extremely damaging to the Home Office's reputation, particularly with the Treasury who are likely to exercise closer scrutiny over the unaudited resource budget outturn submitted to them each summer.
	What assurances can the Financial Secretary give us about the Home Office's use of public money? Is the Treasury now keeping a close eye on what happens? What supervision regime is now in place? Is there now a Treasury hit squad inside the Home Office helping to sort things out? How often does the Home Office have to report in and tell the Treasury what it is doing? It has been a disgraceful episode and I hope that it is soon sorted out.
	I come to the national programme for information technology in the health service. I do so with some trepidation because I see that the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) is in his place. The last time I made a speech on this subjectit was some years ago, I can reassure himhe said that he was glad that there were anoraks in this place who were prepared to devote so much attention to such areas and that he was very glad that he was not one of them. I have to say that the problems have not gone away; if anything, they have become worse. The scale of the national programme is simply huge. As the NAO described it:
	The scope, vision, scale and complexity of the Programme is wider and more extensive than any ongoing or planned healthcare IT development programme in the world.
	It started with the beguiling idea that information technology offered enormous potential benefits for the NHS. Above all, patient records could follow the patient smoothly and quickly around the system, bookings could be made online, and doctors could consult records easily in their surgeries and during their rounds. Managers and clinicians could track and report on the work of hospitals and trusts, on the prevalence of clinical conditions and on the success of the health service in treating them. IT in the NHS seemed to offer nothing short of a revolution. However, the problem was that the revolution appeared to be outside the Government's control. System standards were being set at the centre, as they should be, but system procurement was happening at a local and trust level.

Kitty Ussher: The hon. Gentleman mentioned procurement. Will he join me in congratulating the Department of Health on having secured the cheapest ever deal with Microsoft across the whole world?

Richard Bacon: The hon. Lady may recall that Sir Peter Gershon, when he was at the Office of Government Commerce, negotiated a deal with Microsoft that saved the taxpayer 120 million. As the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) said earlier, there have been serious problems with the public sector failing to exercise the procurement power that it has, and I welcome any steps towards improving procurement and using the purchasing power that is available.
	In relation to the national programmein which Microsoft is not involved, by the waythe system standards have been set at the centre, but procurement has happened locally. The whole process must have seemed terribly slow to those who wanted to make things happen more quickly. That was why, some years ago, the Prime Minister called to a seminar the heads of some of the world's largest IT companies. They told him that there was no problem and that they could design, deliver and install national systems across the entire NHS that would do everything that the most optimistic advocate of health IT could want. Of course, they said it would not be cheap and they quoted a figure of 2.3 billion, but, as the Prime Minister said, up to 600 million pieces of paper would be saved a year.
	Thus the national programme for IT in the health service was born and with it a new bureaucracy, Connecting for Health. Promises were made, headlines garnered and giant regional contracts were duly let. However, five years on, where are we? For one thing, the cost of the whole programme has inflated enormously. By 2003-04, 6.2 billion worth of contracts had been placed and, in evidence to the PAC, the director general of IT in the health service, Mr. Richard Granger, told us that the figure is now 12.4 billion. The Minister of State for Health has said that the figure is closer to 20 billion, although there is some dispute about what he is including in that. In any event, those are huge numbers.

David Taylor: Even taking the mean of those projected figures, it suggests an overspend of 12.5 billion, which would fund in total the trust deficits that the NHS is experiencing for more than 20 years, which would take us moderately close to the next Conservative Government.

Richard Bacon: The hon. Gentleman ends on a very optimistic note, and I join him in that. The fact is that the numbers, as well as being very large, have been very varied. We have heard 2.3 billion; 6.2 billion; 6.8 billion; 1.9 billion of central costs, making a total of 8.7 billion; 3.4 billion of central costs making 12.4 billion; 20 billion; and three to five times central contract costs, which could push the figure to more than 30 billion. The fact that the figures are so vague and varied is part of the problem. The potential opportunity cost is also enormous, as the hon. Gentleman points out.

John Pugh: Apart from the central cost, there is the serious issue of what the programme will cost individual trusts and PCTs. No one will put a figure on that.

Richard Bacon: The National Audit Office put a figure of 3.4 billion on it, although how much that takes into account the full costs is a moot point. One has only to read the board papers of trusts around the country to see IT directors saying that they are incurring costs that they cannot recover, in many cases including costs that they incurred through the old information for health programme that was stopped when the national programme for IT in the health service was started and costs incurred on legacy systems. No matter exactly what the sum is, it is definitely big. One could say that cost overruns are nothing new; they are regrettable and to be avoided, but they happen. However, surely in return for that vast forecast expenditure we would now expect to be on the way towards a world-beating IT system.

Kitty Ussher: Will the hon. Gentleman explain where, within the scope of the motion that we debating this evening, the report on IT in the NHS lies?

Richard Bacon: As the hon. Lady will know, we have looked at the national programme for IT in the health service a number of times during the last few years and I dare say that there will be future reports. In fact, the National Audit Office has said there will be other reports on it further down the line. It is a matter of enormous importance to taxpayers and, I am sure, to all members of the Committee.
	One of the suggestions that has been made by Connecting for Health is that 750,000 prescriptions have been issued by using the electronic prescribing service. One of the slightly alarming facts is that only 1.5 per cent. of those were received electronically by pharmacies and hence dispensed. The rest of themsome 740,000simply vanished into the ether, never to be seen or heard of again. The thought of thousands of NHS staff typing pointlessly away is a combination of industry and futility that I find rather depressing to contemplate. The reason for that state of affairs is that, where systems were put in place in GP surgeries, the corresponding systems were not put in place in pharmacies, and sometimes vice versa. That is a relatively small example of some of the problems. There are many others.
	Perhaps the most important and difficult component of the national programme is the delivery of patient administration and clinical systems into acute hospital trusts. We should by now have 110 acute hospitals with patient administration and clinical systems in place. The actual number is just 12. Of those 12, how many are clinical systems? The answer is none. Not a single hospital-wide clinical system has been delivered under the national programme.
	The choose and book system should allow patients to book appointments with doctors electronically. Almost half of all GP referralssome 8.5 million a yearare supposed to be made under that system by September 2007, but so far we have only 300,000 bookings. The number of bookings can be found on the Connecting for Health website. What is not on the website, but is true, is that by the Department of Health's own estimate, only about one quarter of the bookings that have been achieved were made truly electronically; the remaining three quarters were made by telephone.
	One redeeming feature in this rather grim scene is that most of the forecast cost of the national programme has yet to be spent. So far, total expenditure is about 1.5 billion. That figure of actual expenditure so far was confirmed to the Committee by the director general of IT in the health service. Although 1.5 billion is admittedly rather more than the 654 million referred to in the National Audit Office report, it leaves us wondering what sort of organisation can run up almost 850 million of central administration costs before it has even achieved its main aims. However, it remains true that many billions of pounds have yet to be spent, so it may not be too late to turn back from the road that we are currently on.
	That is a crucial point. It is easy to think of NHS IT as a complex and enormously expensive abstractionas a subject for techies and computer journalists, but not for politicians or the national media. In fact, good IT systems offer enormous benefits to patients and bad ones cause them direct harm. The national programme is therefore an issue of great importance. The US firm Cerner, and its partner Fujitsu, have the regional contracts covering the south of England under the programme. It has recently been reported that Cerner is also to enter into a contract with BT to deliver systems in London after problems with another US software supplier, IDX. The Nuffield orthopaedic centre in Oxford is the only trust under the national programme now using the patient administration system offered by Cerner. I have been shown a board paper from the trust, which shows that the trust failed to meet its waiting list targets because IT system problems meant that it could not identify which patients were waiting for what treatment. The paper, by the director of nursing and operations for the trust, states:
	the scale of the difficulties and the duration of time that the problems persisted meant that operationally it was impossible to maintain assurance that all patients could be identified to be treated within appropriate timescales.
	In fact, the standard of the patient information produced by the software system was so low that all the information had to be checked and corrected manually. In other words, the trust and its patients would have been better off with no electronic system at all.
	In Birmingham children's hospital, the patient administration system was provided by the troubled UK firm iSOFT. A series of problems in Birmingham culminated in the trust losing 800 children's records in a fortnight. Some of those children turned up for appointments entirely unexpectedly because their records could not be found, while others were presumably not summoned for appointments that they required. To give one more example, the child health system deployed by BT in London lost so many children's records that the number of vaccinations given to children in the primary care trusts that were even in a position to report any statistics went down by 18 per cent.
	Volume 16, No. 25 of CDR Weekly, the Health Protection Agency's journal, stated:
	This is the third quarterly report in which national trends could not be reported due to problems with new child health systems being implemented in London. Comparing the year 2005/6 to 2004/5, the number of children in London who are missing from the COVER programme is nearly 18,000 for children turning 12 months, over 14,500 for children turning 24 months and nearly 19,000 for children turning 5 years of age.
	The number of children getting vital vaccinations for measles, mumps, rubella, polio and so on fell by a fifth. The Health Protection Agency commented:
	If new child systems fail to deliver ... then children risk missing out on vaccination. Thus, they remain unprotected and eventually will catch measles, mumps, and rubella infections.
	The HPA report continued:
	Falls in coverage of this magnitude not only indicate that individual children may be at risk, but also represent a potential major public health threat to the control of the diseases in the community.
	Those are chilling words. It is extraordinary that no clinical systems have been deployed under the national programme. However, on reflection, given the damage that patient administration systems now seem to be doing, perhaps that is just as well. The implications of similar failures in clinical systems hardly bear thinking about.
	Finally, I want to deal briefly with the consequences of the crisis in the national programme for IT contractors. Mr. Granger, the programme's director general, is fond of using blood-curdling metaphors when speaking about IT contractors. He intends, he says, to treat them like huskieswhen one goes lame, it is shot, cut up and fed to the restapparently, that keeps them keen. However, managing a massive IT programme is not like running a dog sled. I believe that that brand of macho management threatens to bring yet more chaos to an already tottering system.
	By the end of March this year, the four major contractorsBT, Accenture, Fujitsu and CSC had received only 250 million in payments on 5 billion-worth of contracts.
	However, their spending in what I believe to be a doomed effort to make the fundamentally flawed system work has been massive. Accenture has wisely already set aside 260 million as provision against losses on the contract, but the remaining three companies have remained strangely silent. By the end of March this yeartwo and a half years inBT had received just 1.3 million on its contract of 996 million. My best advice indicates that BT has spent more than 200 million trying to get systems up and running. That amount does not yet figure in its annual accounts. I understand that BT intends to replace its existing software supplier with Cerner, fresh from that company's poor performance at Nuffield. However, that means that most, or perhaps all, of BT's work in progress on the existing contract will need to be written off. We have already seen what happened to the software supplier iSOFT, when shareholders

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am most impressed by the hon. Gentleman's expertise on this subject, but it does not relate to the matter before us. Although there will be other occasions on which he will be able to raise the problems of the NHS, he must get back to the matter in hand.

Richard Bacon: Thank you for that guidance, Mr. Speaker. I will rapidly draw my remarks to a conclusion and allow other hon. Members to speak.
	The national programme for IT in the health service has been covered by the National Audit Office on several occasions, as I am sure it will be in the future. It is the largest civilian IT programme in the world and a matter of great importance. I hope that it is also of great importance to the Treasury and that the Financial Secretary will find time in his winding-up speech to refer to the interest that the Treasury has in the matter, because the amounts involved are so enormous that they could have huge consequences for the Exchequer, fiscal policy and, indeed, the rest of the country.

Helen Goodman: It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and, indeed, to serve on the PAC under the benign and good-humoured chairmanship of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). Like him and my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry), I have looked at the 17th report, Achieving value for money in the delivery of public services, because every member of the PAC wants the Committee to be effective. We want its work to be used and useful; we want to be sure that lessons are learned and are taken into account in decision making.
	The 17th report identified seven key aspects of public service delivery that Departments must target to achieve better value for money: planning carefully prior to implementation; strengthening project management; reducing complexity and bureaucracy; raising public service productivity; being more commercially astute; tackling fraud; and better and more timely implementation of policies and programmes. An example of good planning is the benefit payment card, which is successful as 97 per cent. of benefits are paid directly into people's accounts and claimants are pleased with it. Another good example is the turnaround at the passport agency.
	Turning to project management, there have been many complex IT schemes. Like the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), I am generally not a fan of IT schemes, but we have become better at running them. As for the need to reduce complexity and bureaucracy, the Committee has returned to the benefits system as we need to reduce tiers of bureaucracy and the number of institutions delivering public services. Public service productivity improvements include a better use of accommodation in the NHS and the higher education sector. The role of the Office of Government Commerce is vital if we are to achieve the goal of being more commercially astute, and after the reports were produced we looked at the issue again. There is a great deal to be done to tackle fraud in tax payments, and in its examination of policies that need to be implemented better and in a more timely manner, the 17th report looked at the Eurofighter and the Apache helicopter.
	In considering whether the reports are used and are useful, I looked at the document that the Treasury published last Thursday entitled, Releasing the resources to meet the challenges ahead: value for money in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. I wished to make a judgment about whether the proposal to save 2.5 per cent. and achieve better administration is credible, because last week there was a great deal of scepticism about that objective and many aspersions were cast on it. The Gershon efficiency programme identified five measures to improve efficiency. Inevitably, they are not the same as the measures identified by the NAO, although there is considerable overlap. For example, the NAO and the PAC said that it was important to be more commercially astute, but the Treasury document looked at procurement practices in general. The NAO discussed productivity, but the Treasury document looked at the importance of increasing the ratio of productive time to total time in the public services. The NAO discussed the need to reduce complexity and bureaucracy, but the Treasury document looked at transactional services policy, funding and regulation. In addition, it urged the importance of reducing spending in corporate services. It reported that in recent years, there have been 8 billion-worth of savings as a result of those five measures. However, I am sure that everybody would be more interested in looking forward, so I wanted to see whether examples of the type given in the document issued last week are likely to produce the sort of savings that would result in a 2.5 per cent. saving year on year overall.
	On procurement, the examples given are pulling together procurement for several Government Departments and public bodies. For example, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development are to collocate many offices. The Department for Transport will promote collaboration between highways authorities on new build and maintenance. The Department for Education and Skills is piloting e-procurement for schools. Lord Carter's review of legal aid will provide a market-based approach which should produce savings of 20 per cent. over the next four years. In addition to these value-for-money considerations, procurement will need to take account of the decisions set out in the energy review and the need for procurement to be compliant with our climate change objectives in the future.
	Turning to productive time, the sort of possibilities spelled out are the major changes in the Department for Constitutional Affairs with regard to the running of the court system, and in the Ministry of Defence the merging of the Defence Logistics Organisation with the Defence Procurement Agency. The Lyons review made recommendations on the use of assets, from which should flow significant asset disposals projected to be 30 billion in the period up to 2010. The Department for Communities and Local Government and the Treasury are to improve the release of land for house building. So there are a large number of chunky examples.
	The PAC also considered the reduction of complexity and bureaucracy. It is important to see how that is to be carried forward. Examples include reducing the number of funding streams for improving the social housing stock, and rationalising the number of contact centres and local offices in order to share provision across the public sector and reduce duplication through better data sharing.
	The PAC concentrated a great deal on the need to reduce fraud. Improvements are being made to the operation of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to cut evasion of vehicle excise duty. That is projected to save 140 million a year. The court system is changing the administration of fixed penalty notices, which will reduce the scope for defrauding the public purse.
	On implementation, which is another of the overlapping themes, the Department of Health is reviewing systemic delivery issues to improve treatment pathways. That will cut the length of patients' hospital stays, which should benefit not just the public purse, but patients.
	On the two other factors identified by the PAC in its 17th report, improving planning and improving project management, there is no explicit read-across to the plans for the comprehensive spending review. However, the NAO commented on the importance of strengthening Government Departments' capabilities. That means upskilling staff to raise their capacity to plan and manage complex projects. That is being done partly by upskilling within Departments and partly by strengthening central support and collaboration. For example, the work of the Office of Government Commerce and the introduction of the gateway system, which we have discussed, will no doubt turn out to be important. It could also be said that the process of cross-cutting reviews and zero-based budgeting is part of improving planning and management.
	To summarise, when the 17th report by the PAC was published, the Chairman said:
	Given the scale of Government spending just a 2 per cent. improvement in the use of resources could generate savings of 8 billion a year.
	In the forthcoming comprehensive spending review, the Government have gone further, identifying scope for saving 2.5 per cent. a year. Looking at the range of measures and policies, that appears to be completely credible. We have come a long way from the Gladstonian approachor even the 17th century, candle-ends approach. To achieve that saving, it will be necessary to re-engineer processes and utilise the procurement scope of the 125 billion that the Government already spend. But I am sure that that will turn out to be possible, and that as the PAC goes on to do further work we will find further possibilities that the Government will be able to make use of.

David Heath: May I start by returning to a point that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) made in introducing the debate? This is no time of the evening for a debate of such importance on matters that are so crucial to the efficient governance of the country. The Public Accounts Committee does a very important job. It produces reports that are of enormous value, and they ought to be given proper and timely scrutiny by the House. That is not achieved by a debate such as this in which, with very few exceptions, the participants are Committee members. I notice that Members present include the hon. Members for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson), for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), for Tooting (Mr. Khan), for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) and for Burnley (Kitty Ussher), and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), as well as the Financial Secretary, who is nominally a member of the Committee, and its Chairman, the hon. Member for Gainsborough. If this debate is only to be an expanded Committee meeting, it fails its primary purpose. I hope that the Government's business managers take note of that and ensure that in future we have a more appropriate setting for the debate.

Richard Bacon: I completely agree with what the hon. Gentleman has just said. If we have to grind on late into the night, I suppose that it is in the best interests of taxpayers that we do so. But has the hon. Gentleman noticed that the Government's business managersthe Whipsare also Treasury Ministers, and if Ministers on the Treasury Bench are required to stay late this evening, it can only be because of actions of the Treasury itself, and they might think of that in future, before timing a debate in this way?

David Heath: Let us hope so, but I am not entirely sure that the usual channels work in that way.
	Let me pay tribute again to the work of the PAC. Its Chairman used the word assiduity in terms of his office. Assiduity is one of those words that nowadays have almost solely a parliamentary usage: no one other than parliamentarians talks of being assiduous, just as no one else talks about being churlish. But it is a relevant word: this Committee is assiduous in its approach to its work, for which we are grateful.
	I have never had the pleasure of serving on the PAC, but I did serve on what is perhaps an analogous body before I entered the House. I was an audit commissioner, and I know about the important work that was done by the Audit Commissionthe sister body of the National Audit Officeand the importance of our reports in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of local government and the national health service.
	The other important point to make is that the PAC's reports are not all about disasters; they are not all about things going wrong. We need to put it on the record that they often point to good practice, and sometimes even excellence, in public services. If we do not recognise that, we give a false perspective of the Committee's work.
	Having said that, it is inevitable that we concentrate on those areas where the Government are performing less well. We have heard mention of areas that I do not intend to pursue. The hon. Member for Portsmouth, North mentioned Ministry of Defence procurement; that has been a long-term concern of mine and I still do not think that we get it right. However hard the MOD tries to improve its procurement, it does not get it right, and too often there are some absurdities in procurement procedures, which we can ill afford. Not only do they cost money, they reduce our armed forces' effectiveness and sometimes subjects them to risks that they should not face, simply because of the lack of correctness in procurement procedure.
	Nor am I going to go into national health service IT procurement. I assume that the hon. Member for South Norfolk was discussing earlier the 17th report's reference to NHS IT, and that that was why his entire speech was in order. I want to echo some of the concerns that he expressed by pointing out that when I met my local medical committee of general practitioners in Somerset last week, top of their agenda was their concern about the NHS IT contract's effect on their practices. We in this House should be aware of that issue.
	I do want to mention the Home Office, and I share many of the concerns that have already been expressed. The 34th report, on returning failed asylum applicants, was the first crack that caused the entire edifice to collapse, and not before time. The Home Office has been underperforming in management, service delivery and, as we have already heard, accountancy procedures for far too long. The hon. Member for Portsmouth, North mentioned how often pilot schemes were progressed without assessing the results. No Department is more guilty of that than the Home Office, which is forever starting pilot schemes and rolling out the relevant programmes across the countrysometimes with disastrous resultsbefore the schemes have even run their course, let alone before the evidence has been assessed. We see that in legislation, as well; sometimes, legislation is amended before it has even come into force. That is not the right way to run a Department of such importance to the country, and I do hope that the new Home Secretary is getting to grips with it, but I fear that the early signs are not good. We must wait to see what happens in the days and months to come.
	I turn to a perhaps less obvious reportthe 40th, on efficiency in water resource management in the Environment Agency. I have a particular and personal interest in water resource management, as I live in a village where we have been given notice of discontinuation of our water supply by the Duke of Somerset. I want to stress the huge strains that are being put on the Environment Agency, a body for which I have a great deal of time, and which does absolutely essential work. My contention is that the increasing costs of flood management are preventing it from doing a lot of the other work in mitigation of environmental damage that it ought to be doing. In particular, it is unable to provide the level of resources for environmental protection that it should. I hope that the Committee will return to that issue and the question of the distribution of resources. It made the point in the 40th report that there was a blurring of the resources applied to water resource management and to flood defence. In fact, that is a wider problem within the Environment Agency, and, because I want it to do the best possible job, and because I know the demands being put on its limited resources, it is worth exploring further.
	I turn to one other use of the Environment Agency's resources that came to my notice a few days ago. A couple of websites belonging to the agencyor, more accurately, to the Asiantaeth yr Amgylchedd Cymru, which is the Environment Agency Waleshave devoted an entire page to the
	Nentydd Mells, Whatney a Nunney,
	and the
	Somerset Frome yn Whitam Friary a Frome.
	Being translated, that is the Mells stream in Whatley and Nunney and the River Frome in Witham Friary, my home village, in my constituency. In none of those three villages do we have a monoglot Welsh speaker, and I am not entirely sure that it is a proper use of resources to use translating facilities to provide individual websites for flood defence and flood protection information in Welsh for my Somerset villages.
	I know that we are quite near to Wales. I suppose that we are a Marcher county. I strongly support the view that there should be Welsh information for Welsh people in Wales. However, I do not believe that it is a sensible use of resources to provide information in Welsh about flood levels in villages in Somerset, because we find it difficult to assimilate that information. The Committee might like to consider that. Perhaps the issue should have been incorporated in the report Lost in translation? which was actually on an entirely different subject.
	Lastly, I will deal with tax credit fraud. It is an inevitable area of concern. Exactly a year ago today, when the Committee issued its fourth report, it was slightly optimistic about fraud. It reported:
	The Department has made good progress in reducing losses from fraud and error.
	Unfortunately, the Department in question was the Department for Work and Pensions; the tax credit system is operated by the Treasury through Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. We have the 37th report, on the Inland Revenue, and I see within it a great deal of concern expressed.
	We had the original estimate of 460 million of fraud in the tax credit system. We know that that has now increased to about 1.28 billion in the first year. We know also that the signs are that in the second year of operation the figure will be as high again. Further, we know that 131 million of taxpayers' money has been lost to organised fraudto gangs working in collaboration, it would appear, with civil servants, although that is yet to be established, to defraud the Exchequer. In addition, we know that in the third year of operation the overpayment of tax creditsa point made by the Chairman of the Committeeis likely to be about 1.8 billion. So many unhappy people have been given money which they unwittingly received, not knowing that they were not entitled to it, and have suffered the consequences of having that clawed back. Sometimes that has caused great hardship to families, because the money was inevitably spent on children's clothes, Christmas presents or whatever was required in the household.
	In the first three years of tax credits, 5.8 billion has been overspent and 2.4 billion has been lost in fraud. There is at least a strong suspicion that this was known to the Department back in 2004, and yet the ePortal, which is thought to be the main occasion for fraud, was not closed until December 2005.
	There is still a sense of denial on the part of the Treasury about these facts. There is concern that it has not come to grips with its underperformance in dealing with the matter. Yet 1 in every 10 in this system is lost through error and fraud. That being so, I think that we are entitled to ask why better and more stringent action was not taken at any early stage. When the Comptroller and Auditor General has to qualify the accounts of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs year after year, of all the Departments in the panoply of the state, there are serious questions to be asked.
	I close by taking up a point that the Chairman of the Committee may have raised slightly out of order, in that it was referred to in a report that was published only today and is not part of our consideration. I will follow the hon. Gentleman's lead by at least mentioning what he said. He used the phrase, Getting it right the first time. That is a key part of delivering good public services. Time and again in our constituencies we as individual Members see examples of the inability of public services to get it right first time, occasioning people to come to our advice surgeries or write us letters that require us to write letters on House of Commons notepaper, and miraculously what was not right the first time is then sorted, because a Member of Parliament has written to the chief executive of the agency concerned and that then descends through the bureaucracy like a brick until it hits some poor unfortunate who then has to recalculate the figures and get it right. It should not be like that. People should have the expectation and right that Government Departments will make the calculation to get it right first time. Until we have systems that make sure that that is the case, we are failing our citizens.
	Yet again I congratulate the Public Accounts Committee on all its work in highlighting cases where the Government Departments do not get it right, in the hope and expectation that improvement will come. I hope that I am as optimistic as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). I am not sure that I am. She sees a bright new future for Government as a result of the reports. I hope that that is the case because it is in all our interests that it is the case. I express a little cynicism and a little pessimism, but let us hope that there is at least some incremental improvement, and that the PAC has helped that process.

Sadiq Khan: I begin as other colleagues have ended, by paying tribute to Nick Wright, Chris Randall, Emma Sawyer and Ronnie Jefferson, who run the Committee's office so efficiently, and also to the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, and his team at the NAO, who really are top drawer. I note the time, so I will focus primarily on two particular reports in the motion, the 22nd and the 37th reports, that may not otherwise receive the attention that I believe they deserve.
	Last time we discussed a PAC report, in January 2006, the Financial Secretary described our work as a tour de force. However, it is not just the Financial Secretary or the Treasury who take an interest in our reports. It is not even the Today programme which cherry-picks and selects the most outrageously critical comments of the Chairman against the Government which has an interest in the work that we do. What is remarkable is how non-governmental organisations, pressure groups, constituents and other Departments take an interest in our work, and the work that we do provides an opening or a springboard for things that they can do.
	The 22nd report was one such report. The Chairman of the PAC talked about the impact on the end user, and the 22nd report is a good example. That report was on the subject of maintaining and improving Britain's railway stations. As all constituents in Tooting will know, I have been campaigning for improvements in Earlsfield station in my constituency for some time now. At the beginning of this month, a help point was installed, which enables disabled passengers to utilise a free taxi service that willtake them to an accessible station. This followed confirmation that I received at the Committee meeting on 12 October that the Association of Train Operating Companies would be investing 600,000 to improve such facilities across the network, and train operating companies such as South West Trains have followed that lead.
	However, in its report the Committee highlighted the fact that more than half of the country's stations are not fully accessible to the disabled. That led me to table early-day motion 911, which 141 colleagues have signed, although one or two Committee members still have not done so, and I highly recommend them to do so. The situation highlighted by our Committee and by the early-day motion is clearly unacceptable. Therefore, as I said earlier, I welcome the Department for Transport's commitment to invest 370 million over the next decade to address the deficiencies that we raised, which are in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
	I was disappointed that Earlsfield was not included in the 47 stations initially chosen for the study, but I am pleased about the objectives outlined in the railways for all strategy. Once again, I would like the Committee to take some of the credit for the conclusions that that strategy reached. It called for improvements to be made in a shorter time frame, and our report highlighted the fact that insufficient attention had been paid to the quality of stations. Now that the Department for Transport is responsible for stations strategy, I hope that it will respond accordingly to that recommendation.
	Station security is another important area that the Committee investigated, and I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Ms Butler) will hand in a petition tomorrow highlighting concerns that we first raised in our Committee. Balham station in my constituency particularly concerned me, and I raised the matter in Committee, because there appeared to be complacency about passenger security. Our Committee highlighted the point that few train operating companies had joined national schemes to improve security and reduce crime.
	The report cited the three most reassuring facilities for passengersthe presence of staff, effective lighting and closed circuit television. I acknowledge that the Treasury has contended that improvements to personal safety will increase train usage only by approximately 2 per cent., as opposed to the 11 per cent. figure quoted in the report, but that does not reduce the significance of safer stations, and I am sure that I speak for hon. Members on both sides of the House when I say that the safety and security of our constituents is of paramount importance.
	The report also confirmed that the original franchise agreements failed to place suitable emphasis on the improvement of facilities. I therefore welcome the Government's increased expectations regarding station security within future franchise agreements. Investment in British Transport police increased by 24 per cent. in the past year, as the issue began to receive the necessary recognition.
	The Committee also highlighted the complicated and inflexible procedures employed by Network Rail, which many see as an obstacle in the path of improvement to station services. The majority of our stations around the country are more than 100 years old, and approximately 15 per cent. of them are listed buildings. Moreover, as I learned at first hand, too many organisations are responsible for station maintenance. I understand that work is under way on a new stations code to establish more effective contractual arrangements, and I believe that that is essential if stations are to make progress on maintenance, security and facilities.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) has mentioned the Committee's 37th report, Inland Revenue Standard Report: New Tax Credits, and my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) has mentioned the 36th report, which is connected to it. When we questioned the chairman of HM Revenue and Customs on 14 December in Committee, I established that tax credits had the highest take-up of any benefit delivered through a credit system. Tax credits benefit at least 3,600 families in my constituency and a total of 6.1 million families nationwide, which include 10 million children. I understand from the evidence that we heard and from the excellent questions that I asked

Ian Davidson: You did.

Sadiq Khan: From a sedentary position, my hon. Friend has complimented my questioning, and I thank him for the compliment.

Kitty Ussher: So do I.

Sadiq Khan: Another hon. Friend has also complimented me.
	I understand that the take-up rate is particularly high among low-income families, at 93 per cent. compared with only 47 per cent. for the old working families tax credit. I welcome the commitment by the Government, the Treasury and HMRC to improve the efficiency of tax credit administration. The problems associated with overpayments highlighted in the report have prevented that laudable scheme from receiving the praise that it certainly deserves. Overpayments are inherent in the system, because of the provisional nature of the awards. I have been assured that HMRC is confident that the changes implemented by the Government, which are outlined in the report, will ensure that overpayments are significantly reduced. The disregard for income increases has been raised from 2,500 to 25,000, and claimants must advise HMRC of changes in their circumstances within one month.
	The report also raised concerns about error and fraud. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome has touched on those concerns, and I will not rehearse his points.

David Heath: I sincerely hope that HMRC is coming to terms with improving the system to prevent fraud. However, some constituents have told it several times about changes of circumstance, but nothing has happenedit is as though the letters have disappeared into the etherwhich means that they are still overpaid, despite having done everything that they can to notify it. Is that not a cause for some concern?

Sadiq Khan: Absolutely. The permanent secretary who gave evidence to our Committee took that on the chin and said that the Department will not seek to recover whatever payments are made through no fault of the claimant. That is some comfort to the distressed constituents mentioned by the hon. Gentleman.
	As we heard in our evidence, increased attempts at tax credit fraud resulted in the website being closed down. I welcome the Government's decision to double the number of pre-payment checks before issuing a tax credit award. The Committee was reassured that the majority of attempts to commit identity fraud through the tax credit system were prevented. Nevertheless, I am pleased that HMRC will now be more proactive in contacting certain claimants. The Financial Secretary has taken this issue very seriously, as has his Department. Nevertheless, it is important to maintain the right balance between keeping the system user-friendly, thereby maintaining a high take-up and helping the most vulnerable in our communities, and preventing fraud and overpayments.

Ian Davidson: May I say that the excellence of my hon. Friend's questions is matched only by the magnificence of his speeches? Does he agree that the PAC offers the only forum where it is possible to have a non-partisan discussion about a scheme such as tax credits, which provides an enormous amount of benefits to a large number of people yet has some clear difficulties and problems? In the Chamber, we often end up with yah-boo politics that generate a great deal of heat but very little light as regards clarifying the difficulties.

Sadiq Khan: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and would recommend three sources that confirm what he says. First, the report prepared by the NAO was based on facts and figures rather than dogma. Secondly, the transcript of our evidence, including the questions asked by the Chairman and other hon. Members on both sides of the House, concerned the process and implementation of the scheme rather than the party politics. Thirdly, the PAC report was very balanced and dealt with the facts, problems and challenges while recognising the benefits in a non-party political way. It is a shame that the day after our report was published, the Today programme decided to cherry-pick the criticisms, not the excellent and balanced parts that were of a non-party political nature.
	I should like to end with a couple of words of caution. First, an issue raised in January this year has still not been dealt withnamely, that very good reports are being produced but they are produced too long after the initial NAO reports. When our Chairman wound up the previous debate, he said that he would look into that. I think that a huge amount of progress still needs to be made.
	Secondly, the purpose of the PAC is to provide parliamentary scrutiny of the Executive, but that does not mean that it always needs to be critical. The hon. Member for Somerton and FromeI think that I have quoted him three times in my speech, which must be a record, and always with a generous interpretation of his wordstalked about our Committee and our reports highlighting good practice, best practice and excellent practice, but that aspect appears to have been lost. I am concerned that in providing parliamentary scrutiny of the Executive, the PAC may be seen merely to be critical, when it will sometimes be complimentary. That may lead to our Committee being perceived in a way that is unhelpful to those who give evidence, and those of us who are members may become cynical in that regard. Witnesses, who often want to come and be open and get to the root of the problems, may become wary of doing so because of our reputation.
	I hope that the experience of the past 300 years will continue in terms of the spirit of our Committee in providing scrutiny, some good and some not so good.

Greg Clark: At this stage of the debate, everything that ought to be said has been said, but not everybody has said it. I shall therefore follow suit and praise the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). He is an indulgent Chairman to Committee members but a fearsome Chairman in the eyes of witnesses. I remember, with a mixture of horror and admiration, his intervening on one witness, whose answer was full of circumlocution, to tell him that he was speaking drivel and that if he did not do better in the next half hour, he should not go further. It will take me many years to reach that admirable level of intolerance of waffle. I have greatly enjoyed serving under my hon. Friend's chairmanship.
	I pay tribute to the National Audit Office under Sir John Bourn. It, too, chooses its words carefully and I often marvel at the understatement with which it delivers withering judgments. Using the word disclaim, which my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) mentioned, is a modest way in which to pronounce a devastating verdict on a set of accounts. Perhaps that serves as a totem for Sir John's approach. We all know what he means, but he expresses it diplomatically.
	May I also put on record my appreciation of the work of the Committee staff and the Treasury representatives, who respond to questions that are often naive, at least on my part, with enthusiasm and helpfulness, which often goes beyond the call of duty? I am grateful for that.
	I intended to praise the speech of the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan), but in the light of his comments, perhaps I should give way so that he can praise his own contribution. However, he always makes a lively contribution in the Committee and he has done that again tonight.
	Given the lateness of the hour, I want to comment on only three subjects that we have considered: the BBC; our report on competition, which was directed at the Office of Fair Trading; and the report, which several hon. Members mentioned, on tax credits.
	The Chairman referred to our perennial plea to be given oversight of the BBC, or least to allow the National Audit Office access. I want to reinforce that. I should perhaps declare an interest because I worked for the BBC in a previous existence. One of my duties was being the point man who haggled with the NAO about what went into its report on the World Service, which is the one part of the BBC to which the NAO has unfettered access. I know from that experience that there is no question that the NAO's scrutiny of that part of the BBC compromised its editorial or political integrity. It was entirely proper that the use of public money be scrutinised in that way. The contention that NAO involvement exposes the BBC to excessive political interference is frankly nonsense.
	It is disappointing that the Green Paper, which became a White Paper and is shortly to become a BBC charter, has given way in almost every respect to the BBC's demands but not to those of Parliament. I do not know what insight that provides into the Government's thinking, but it is regrettable.
	Our report on the BBC had a worthy subjectthe expansion of White Citybut it is not one of the more central subjects. I hope that, if the NAO has unfettered access, we might consider issues such as the BBC's investment in digital and online services and its commercial services in our debate next year or the subsequent year. Such matters go to the heart of the appetite for proper public scrutiny of the BBC.
	Let me give an example of things going well. The hon. Members for Tooting and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said that we should praise and encourage. Our robust hearing on the important subject of the Office of Fair Trading has already had a remarkably salutary effect. Under the Competition Act 1998, the Office of Fair Trading acquired far-reaching new powers, including the power to compel witnesses to give evidence and to fine up to 10 per cent. of turnover. It has also had a huge increase in its staff and budget levels.
	When representatives of the OFT appeared before the Committee, however, we found that it had failed to make use of those powers in almost every respect. Inquiries that were meant to take between six months and a year were taking three years to complete. Not one of the standards that the OFT had set itself, as outlined on its website, had been met. Not once had the power to compel witnesses to give evidence been used. The situation was unravelling to such an extent that it gave the impression of being what I described as a meek organisation.
	The chief executive of the OFT, John Fingleton, was only six weeks into his term of office when he appeared before the Committee. To his credit, however, he did not do what he might reasonably have been expected to do, and claim that he had not been there at the time. That would perhaps have been understandable, but instead he took our criticisms on the chin and, since that hearing, there has been a remarkable flurry of activity at the OFT. It has launched inquiries into supermarkets, school uniform suppliers and credit services, and there has been a real increase in the pace and relevance of its inquiries. It is too early to say whether all that will be matched by a sustained focus on quality, although I obviously hope that it will be. I commend the OFT's positive reaction to the NAO report and to the rather robust exchanges with all hon. Members on the Committee.
	The third subject that I want to talk about is tax credits. Many hon. Members have mentioned this already. Like the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson), I believe that this is an extremely important area of public policy. I believe that to be the case for two reasons. First, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned, the tax credits policy has caused the report and accounts of the Inland Revenue to be qualified four times in a row. Given that that is the flagship financial Department of the Government, responsible directly to Treasury Ministers, this is a matter of profound concern that should rightly be the concern of the Committee.
	Secondly, the new tax credits system cost 16 billion, which is a huge sum that requires proper scrutiny. As the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West said, the Committee is the only forum in which this amount of Government spending can be scrutiniseddare I say professionally?without the partisan knockabout that we get here. I should like to place on record my disappointment in the degree of scrutiny of the tax credit system that we have been able to exercise. In the pre-Budget report, the Government changed an important part of the tax credit policyrightly, so far as one can tell on paper. They increased the disregard for people's changes in income from 2,500 a year to 25,000 a year. That is a huge increase that will have huge financial consequences. It is therefore important that the Committee should be able properly to interrogate the reasons for that decision, to test whether the change in policy offers value for money, and that is what we tried to do.
	Committee members from both sides of the House asked some very relevant questions. Perhaps I should follow the example of the hon. Member for Tooting and praise my own questions, as he did. I asked the questions that were on everyone's mind. I asked the deputy chairman of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs the following question:
	Part of the assessment
	in the pre-Budget report
	must have been to have an idea of what the pure fiscal effect was of increasing the disregard. That work must have been done; you will confirm that?
	Mr. Gray replied:
	I believe it has been done.
	I said:
	Since that information is available, will you write to me through the Committee giving what the assessment is of the pure component of increasing the disregard?
	Mr. Gray said:
	Certainly, in liaison with our Treasury colleagues. We will write to the Committee.
	I said, Providing that information? and Mr. Gray said, Yes.
	That information has not been provided. In the Committee's report, the evidence that HMRC submitted said, in complete contrast to what was told to us in the hearing:
	It is not possible to produce reliable estimates of the cost of the individual elements on their own.
	When we discussed our draft report as a Committee, we noticed that the information had not been provided, and we said that if it had been overlooked, we ought to draw attention to it. I know that Labour Members participated in that discussion. We therefore placed in the report recommendation 3, which said:
	Before the Pre-Budget Report the Department estimated the cost of this element of the package. The Department should provide details of the estimate it made.
	In the Treasury minute responding to the Committee's recommendations, as Treasury minutes are required to do, we have yet again an answer that is waffle to the point of being gobbledegook. It says:
	The figure refers to a change in what claimants would be entitled to. This does not translate into a cost to the Exchequer.
	That flies in the face of the reasonable evidence that HMRC gave to the Committee.
	Just to emphasise the point that this information exists and is not being provided to the Committee, I can tell the House that the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which no one can accuse of being politically partisan, put in a freedom of information request to obtain that information. In a letter refusing to disclose it, HMRC wrote to Mike Brewer of the IFS:
	You have requested information that HMRC holds about the likely cost in 2006/7, 2007/8 and 2008/9 of increasing the earnings disregard in tax credits from 2,500 to 25,000...In this case we have concluded that the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing it.
	I am very willing to give way to the Financial Secretary if he can give us the Treasury's calculation of the effect of the increase in the disregard or explain just what is the public interest in withholding from the Public Accounts Committee this crucial piece of evidence that witnesses before the Committee said existed, that they promised to provide to the Committee and that they have admitted to the IFS exists, but have not provided.
	We work quite hard as a Committee, meeting twice a week. We take our responsibilities seriously. As the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West mentioned, for the most part we do not have party politics before our eyes when we are scrutinising Government value for money. We all seriously want to get to grips with the question of tax credits. My view, like that of many Labour Members, is that tax credits have many virtues and it is important to get them right and solve some of the overpayments that cause such distress to many of our constituents. We can judge whether that is the right reform only if the Government provide us with the information to make that assessment.
	I hope that the Financial Secretary will reflect on the contributions that have been made and, perhaps, trust the Committee and Parliament a little more to do our job in helping to scrutinise these measures. Even if it proves a little embarrassing for Ministers, the function of the Public Accounts Committee, going back into the mists of time, as the Chairman reported, is sometimes to ask difficult questions. It does not give confidence, and it is not an impressive performance by the Government, if information is withheld, impeding us in our duty.

Ian Davidson: I begin my remarks with a tribute to the Chairman of the Committee. I am often asked by my colleagues and, indeed, by Opposition Members what it is like serving under the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). They ask with some trepidation, as though they expect him to behave in a somewhat wild manner. I indicate that indeed he is the very essence of a good Chairman. Despite his views, which when expressed in this Chamber I regard as extreme in the extreme, he has chaired the Committee with impartiality and fairness on all sides. Indeed, he has defended the position of the Committee against assaults from outside. For example, Nicholas Soames, the Member for Prince Charles, has on several occasions berated him for allowing the Committee

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman of the custom of the House of referring to other hon. Members not by their names, but by the constituency that they represent.

Ian Davidson: May I refer to the hon. Gentleman to whom I referred earlier as representing a constituency somewhere in England? I am afraid that I am not aware of his constituency. He gives the impression of seeking to represent a particular individual who, I understand, is not a voter. He regards any inquisition or discussion by the Public Accounts Committee of the financial circumstances of that individual as almost a personal affront. While I anticipate that the Chairman might have some sympathy with that point of view, he has nevertheless defended the Committee's right to conduct those investigations over a long period, for which we are grateful. Given his encouragement, we will continue to do so.
	That is a mark of the political impartiality of the Committee, which has been and continues to be one of our strengths. We meet as a group of partisan politicians in an environment that is almost entirely removed from the cockpit of partisan conflict. There are the occasional Whips' narks from one side or the other who wish to intrude in our debates in the manner for which they have been wound up. However, the vast majority of members of the Committee spot that right away, and more sensible voices prevail.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The scope of the motion is very wide, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will now address his remarks to one of the numerous reports listed in it.

Ian Davidson: Indeed, I will do so in the remaining four hours of my contribution.  [Laughter.]

Richard Bacon: Does the hon. Gentleman recall the maxim of Fidel Castro, that any speech of less than four hours cannot be doing one any good?

Ian Davidson: Indeed, I was reminded of that when the hon. Gentleman was speaking earlier. Perhaps he did not speak for four hours, but it certainly felt like it.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The Standing Orders of the House and the occupant of the Chair will ensure just how long any hon. Member will speak.

Ian Davidson: I look forward to reading  Hansard tomorrow to check exactly how long the hon. Gentleman was speaking for. It may have been for less than four hours, although I did find myself losing the will to live after two and a half.
	May I turn to the way in which our debates are conducted? Ever the assiduous member of the Committee, I think that I am the only one who has brought the complete box of reports to the Chamber. Following the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), I am tempted to read the edited highlights of my contributions to the Committee, but I shall refrain from doing so.
	One of the values of the Committee is the way in which we are, in many ways, about the only genuine counterbalance to the permanent Government. Often, when issues such as tax credits become the subject of partisan debate, there is a knockabout involving a group of Government or Opposition Members who feel obliged to defend what is being done, even though it is indefensible. Only in a relatively impartial environment are we able to have a genuine interrogation of what is being done in our name by the civil service and bureaucracy.
	If people are not entirely convinced that that happens in the United Kingdom, they should have a look at the reports dealing with Northern Ireland, of which I have a number here. They reveal the stultifying effects of permanent government without serious parliamentary challenge. I think we would all accept that, because of the unique circumstances in Northern Ireland, we do not have the degree of scrutiny of the civil service and bureaucracy that would be possible elsewhere.
	What has happened in Northern Ireland is not that governance has been improved, but that governance has been allowed to decay and decline. Despite the excellent efforts of the Northern Ireland Audit Office, we see a quality of governance in Northern Ireland that would not be acceptable, if there were reasonable scrutiny, in any of the other three nations that make up the United Kingdom. We have played a particularly valuable role in that regard. I hope that that the standards that we have tried to introduce in Northern Ireland will be maintained by the Assembly once it is re-established.
	I want to say something about the relationship between the Committee and the National Audit Office. Undoubtedly, many National Audit Office staff members are cleverer than all the members of the Committee put together, although there are occasions when I wish that they did not draw that to our attention so forcefully. Our role is distinct from theirs, and we must recognise that our action in championing their access, standards and criteria is valuable. We need not be experts in every subject that they investigate; in many instances, it is sufficient for us to put our weight behind their efforts.
	If I have a criticism of the National Audit Office, it is one that I have voiced repeatedly when it has produced reports. I do not think that it pays enough attention to the social class impact of Government policies. It does not carry out a social class health check of policies and their implementation. I am continually disappointed by the way in which it allows many Departments not to make any assessment of the different impacts that their policies have on people of different social classes, and the lack of take-up among those with lower incomes and the like. I feel that we should try to incorporate that.

Helen Goodman: Was my hon. Friend particularly reminded of that recently when we took evidence from the Duke of Westminster, who had broken through every barrier to become the first major-general in the Territorial Army since 1945?

Ian Davidson: That is a useful point. It proves that we are an open society. Any old jerk can become the first major-general in the Territorial Army. To be fair to him, he did very much resent any suggestion that he had got there other than on merit. The subtext was that any member of the aristocracy could have become one of the Territorial Army's high heid yins.
	It was interesting that when I asked whether any proles or plebs had reached such a level in the TA, not only was I told that the TA did not keep the figures, but the witnesses resented the suggestion that anything of that sort should be monitored. I think the National Audit Office often overlooks the unconscious assumption that we live in an open society, and that there are no barriers. If I have the Chairman's support, I want to continue to be able to impress such points on the NAO, and to raise them in Committee reports. I think it is up to us, as well as pursuing questions of value for money, to try to ensure that those citizens who are in the least fortunate positions in our society have just as much access to the resources provided by taxation as the Duke of Westminster.
	I particularly want to make another point. I have brought my box of reports along with me, but colleagues will be pleased to hear that I am not going to read out the highlights of speeches. Rather, I want to demonstrate the scale of work that we undertake. I wonder whether the time has come for us to consider splitting the Committee in some way in order to allow Members to specialise rather more. It is impossible for us all to make meaningful contributions based on personal experience on every matter that comes before us.
	We all want to discuss issues with the witnesses in front of us, but in my experience, some of the most constructive and positive contributions to questioning have come from those who can cast some light based on their personal experience, their constituency activities, or some expertise that they have gained elsewhere. It is not possible to have that degree of specialisation across the whole range of governmental activities. If we were to split the Committee to allow a degree of specialisation, it would reduce the burden on individual Members. None of us could adequately prepare for every Committee that goes on every week. We have to pick and choose, so some are missed out. We might be able to make better contributions if we were to revise our methods of operation.
	Finally, Madam Deputy Speakeryou will be aware that when an MP says finally, it usually means that he or she is only about 40 per cent. of the way through, but wants to give the audience some hope; on this occasion, however, I mean finallyI view serving on the Public Accounts Committee as one of the most constructive roles that an MP can have. I am in the fortunate position of having spent almost all my time in the PAC under a Conservative Chairman. I say that because it means that Conservative Members are in opposition and we are in government, which has been a pleasure and long may it continue. I look forward to serving, hopefully, under several other Conservatives. I am conscious that each member of a Select Committee can serve for only eight years. When one of my colleagues said that change might come in 12 and a half years, I thought that it was going to be much longer than that before the Conservatives got into power. I look forward further to serving on the Committee and hope that, under the inspired chairmanship of the hon. Member for Gainsboroughor perhaps the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) or the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) in due coursewe will continue to hold the Government to account, as we have up to now.

Theresa Villiers: The hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) is always a tough act to follow. In winding up what has been a very interesting debate this evening, I would like to pay tribute to the work done by the Public Accounts Committee and its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). I would also like to congratulate and thank Sir John Bourn and his staff at the NAO on the vital work that they do.
	The PAC and the National Audit Office carry out vital work in safeguarding taxpayers' money and rooting out inefficiency, incompetence and waste in the administration of government and the public services. Their work has been, as we have heard this evening, wide ranging and uncompromising over recent months. In his wide-ranging speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough covered the Committee's work, going back as far as 1690. He covered military readiness, consular services, adult literacyand I was particularly pleased that he highlighted the Committee's important work on cancer treatment.
	On cancer, we have an example of both good and bad news. The PAC took note of the work of the cancer networks and improvements in cancer care, but it also felt that better co-ordination between those networks and the primary care trusts that actually spend the money was desirable. It signalled that simpler, clearer and more easily accessible guidance on how to detect the early-stage symptoms of cancer could do much to help remedy the deeply worrying disparities between cancer outcomes in affluent and more deprived communities. I have no doubt that the Government will act on that wise advice of the PAC.
	The hon. Members for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) both focused on the Committee's excellent report on value for money in the public services and on enhancing better project management. They also mentioned the vital importance of pilot projects and of ensuring that lessons learned in one Department can be spread across other Departments as well. They both looked at tackling complexity, especially in the benefits system, and acknowledged the challenge of the difficult tasks of simplification and of reconciling and balancing the needs of flexibility and simplification.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) expressed grave concern that the Home Office's accounts were published with a complete disclaimer by the Comptroller and Auditor General. In effect, they were presented to Parliament unaudited, which is unprecedented for a major spending Department. My hon. Friend also outlined ways to prevent the NHS Connecting for Health scheme from turning into the sort of IT disaster that the PAC has all too often encountered. My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) again had some good news and some bad news. He praised the impact of the PAC's report on the Office of Fair Trading and noted the constructive response to the PAC's criticisms and the increase in activity that they triggered, but he like the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and othersexpressed concern about the crisis in the tax credits system. He noted the Committee's hard-hitting report on that subject, which was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan).
	As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury acknowledged in the debate on 7 June, there is now a consensus across the House in support of the principle of tax credits, but the PAC's April report is just one of a succession setting outthe continuing and severe difficulties in their administration. It highlighted the fact that HMRC overpaid 2.2 billion in tax credits to 1.9 million families in 2003-04, much of it due to the design of the scheme, which bases provisional awards on income and circumstances from the previous year. The House has of course heard countless examples of the hardship that overpayment causes to millions of families landed with bills for repayment that they find it hard to meet. The latest figures show that of the 6 million families who receive tax credits, around 2 million were overpaid and 1 million underpaid, meaning that nearly half the payments in the system were incorrect.
	The Committee noted that by March 2005, HMRC had set aside some 1 billion to cover debts that it was not confident that it could recover. And the loss to the taxpayer does not end there. Increasing the level of income disregarded for the purposes of calculating the final award has a significant cost. It has the same effect as formally writing off overpayments that cannot be recovered. The increase in the disregard is a key part of the package in the pre-Budget report designed to tackle problems in the tax credits systems, butas my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells saidwhen officials were challenged by the PAC about the cost of that change, they were unable to provide a figure. Paul Gray of HMRC indicated that such a figure could be supplied, but, regrettably, none has yet been disclosed to the Committee or the House.
	The report revealed the continuing and grave problems with the tax credit computer system, which was responsible for at least 184 million in overpayments in 2003-04 and 2004-05. Amazingly, of the 71.25 million of compensation that the Government agreed with EDS, which supplied the defective computer systems, some 26.5 million depended on EDS winning further work from the Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) put it, in his characteristically forthright way:
	the company which ministers believe is guilty of messing up the tax credit computer system will pay full compensation only if it is given a chance to mess up another government computer system.
	The Committee concluded that HMRC did not have reliable or up-to-date information on levels of claimant error and fraud in tax credits, and that was seriously impairing its management of the scheme and its ability to safeguard taxpayers' money. As we have heard, an organised assault on the tax credits website led to its closure in December 2004. We also know that at least 1.2 billion was lost to fraud and error in 2003-04, and possibly a great deal more. Again, the Treasury faces the acute embarrassment that the Comptroller and Auditor General has qualified his opinion of the Inland Revenue's trust statement because of fraud and error in the tax credit system.
	The significant sums lost to the Exchequer as a result of tax credit overpayments need to be viewed alongside the PAC's reports on 3 billion lost in benefit fraud and error and nearly 13 billion lost in fuel duty and VAT fraud, the latter now so large as to undermine the accuracy of Britain's trade figures.
	A continuing challenge for the Public Accounts Committee is to ensure that the public sector acts in a commercially hard-headed manner when negotiating to buy goods and services from the private sector. That is one of the key factors highlighted in the Committee's report on Achieving value for money in the delivery of public services, about which we have heard much this evening. Too often, the Committee has seen examples of manifest failure to achieve a good deal for the taxpayer.
	For example, two years after the new Norfolk and Norwich university hospital opened, Octagon, the private finance initiative company that built it, refinanced the transaction, trebling the rate of return that it had predicted for its investors, from 19 per cent. to a staggering 60 per cent. The hospital trust received only 29 per cent. of the refinancing gains, despite taking on new risks and increasing the duration of the contract. Octagon kept 82 million. The Committee concluded that that refinancing produced, in its words,
	a balance of risks and rewards between the public and private sectors that, even for an early PFI deal, is unacceptable.
	The gross imbalance resulted from a failure to include a clause in the original contract to allow the benefits of refinancing to be shared between the public and private sectors. The Committee condemned that failing and noted that such clauses are now expected to be included in PFI contracts. The Committee famously described the deal as
	the unacceptable face of capitalism,
	but the report highlights failings in government as well. That is a bipartisan point, because the start of the negotiations took place under a Conservative Government, although the negotiations were concluded under Labour.
	The evidence given to the Committee indicates that the Treasury and the Department of Health actively discouraged the trust from seeking a better deal. George Monbiot put the point with devastating clarity in  The Guardian:
	The deal...was an Easter Egg hunt. In order to persuade the corporations to participate, the government left an extra 95m in the contract for them to find. This money represents the difference between the financial risk the government said they would carry and the far smaller risk...to which they were actually exposed.

Ian Davidson: I would be grateful if the hon. Lady told us when was the last time a Conservative Finance spokesman favourably quoted George Monbiot and  The Guardian in one sentence.

Theresa Villiers: I suspect that it is unprecedented. It just demonstrates how the Conservative party is changing. George Monbiot said:
	The Department of Health told me that the government had not demanded a refinancing share in its early PFI contracts because they would not have offered 'value for money'.
	He continues:
	If the department believes that letting private companies walk off with 95m of free money represents good value, it's not surprising the NHS is in crisis.
	The PAC is, of course, presented year in year out with examples of projects that go over budget and out of control. For example, the Diana, Princess of Wales memorial fountain had to be closed for major alterations three weeks after it opened owing to design flaws which caused repeated accidents and flooding. The cost rose from 3 million to 5.2 million as a result of what the Committee described as basic project management failures. It wisely advocated that lessons be learned in planning the memorial for the Queen Mother and suggested that water-based features were probably best avoided.
	Another project that caught the Committee's attention was the BBC's White City 2 development. The BBC made 300 variations to the contract and had to pay an extra 60.9 million above the price originally authorised by its governors. However, as we have heard, perhaps the key point to take away from that report is that it was produced as part of a voluntary agreement with the BBC governors to allow the NAO to undertake certain limited studies of BBC activity. The voluntary agreement ends in 2006 and the BBC wishes to retain the final say over what subjects the NAO can and cannot investigate in relation to the BBC's activities. The BBC spends very significant sums of taxpayers' money. In the coming years, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells, we will face many difficult decisions on matters such as the interrelationship of the BBC's commercial and public sector activities, its role in new digital services and its internet presence, not to mention its significant taxi and hospitality bills. As the Chairman of the Committee said in his appeal, surely it is now time for the BBC to receive the same scrutiny as Departments, which are also entrusted with taxpayers' money. I urge the Government to give the Comptroller and Auditor General full access and scrutiny powers over the BBC.
	As the time gets ever later, I turn lastly to the PAC's damning report on the deportation of failed asylum applicants, to which several hon. Members referred. In its report of March this year, the PAC concluded that the UK's asylum policy had been undermined by the inability of the immigration and nationality directorate to deal promptly with asylum applicants whose request to stay in the UK had failed. The IND admitted that it did not know how many failed asylum applicants remained in the UK. The Committee concluded that it would take a staggering 10 to 18 years to clear the ever-increasing backlog of removals. The IND also admitted that more than 400 foreign criminals had been released from prison into the community. We now know, of course, that the numbers released were actually considerably higher and that many of those people had committed serious crimes.
	In its understated way, the PAC dealt a devastating blow by concluding:
	it is difficult to conclude that the taxpayer is obtaining value for money in the efficiency and effectiveness of the Directorate's operations.
	Its report set in train a series of events that led to the admission by successive Home Secretaries that their Department was dysfunctional and not fit for purpose, and to the sacking of one of the most senior members of the Cabinet. That is a classic example of the hugely important work performed by the Committee.
	I commend the pivotal role that the Committee played in revealing the true extent of the crisis in the Home Office. I also commend the vital work that it does to safeguard taxpayers' money and protect and cement our democracy. I commend its reports to the House.

John Healey: It is a privilege to respond to the debate, and to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and his colleagues. We have had a good and wide-ranging debate, which was led in an exemplary way by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), who chairs the Committee. I was interested by the research that he had clearly done on the institution of the Public Accounts Committee. He traces the Committee back to the 17th century, which means that the Committee is not of a dissimilar age to the post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury, which I am privileged to occupy at present. The hon. Gentleman said that the characteristic of the Committee and its work was rightly objectivity over partisanship. Our debate has been conducted in such a tone.
	Although this might not be obvious to some, the Government share many common aims with the Public Accounts Committee. They also appreciate the way in which the Committee helps them to deliver better value for money in public services, even if the Committee quite rightly makes the process rather uncomfortable at times for those involved.
	I pay tribute to the work of the Committee and the Chairman of the Committee. The work load of the Committee is such that it meets twice a week and addresses a different issue each time. Anyone who has served on a Select Committee knows that that represents a formidable undertaking, and the Committee members carry out their work with great diligence and assiduousness.
	I also formally recognise and pay tribute to the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the National Audit Office. They play an important role in supporting the work of the Public Accounts Committee, which, crucially for us all, is the principal way in which Parliament holds the Executive to account. The Committee is Parliament's leading voice in the cross-examination of the Executive.
	In that respect, I am pleased to report the progress that has been made on the Company Law Reform Bill since we last debated the PAC in January. Subject to the approval of the House, the new legislation should enable the Comptroller and Auditor General to audit companies in central Government, hopefully from April next year. That will be a significant further step towards implementing the recommendations of Lord Sharman's report, Holding to Account. One mark of the Treasury's respect for the NAO is the fact that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary recently decided to ask it to conduct an independent review of the Financial Services Authority. That underlines the value that the Treasury places on the work of the NAO and especially the special commissions that it undertakes for us and other parts of the Government.

Richard Bacon: I was pleased to hear the Economic Secretary's announcement that the Government had invited the NAO to look at the FSA, as that is a welcome development. However, on the subject of wider scrutiny, the PAC went to the United States, where the Government Accountability Office can follow the public dollar to state level. Indeed, we visited the GAO regional branch in Boston. Yesterday, I met the Auditor General for Wales, together with his staff in Cardiff, who can follow the public pound from the highest to the lowest level, which suggests that our arrangements, particularly for block grants via the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to local government, leave a great deal to be desired. Obviously, the Audit Commission has separate responsibilities, but there is a case for increasing the NAO's capacity to dig deeper should it wish to do so.

John Healey: The hon. Gentleman has been a PAC member long enough to know that the NAO's capacity is essentially a matter for the House rather than the Treasury. However, there may well be a case for following the pound through, as he put it. I shall come on to the scrutiny of public spending, on which a number of hon. Members commented, but it is important to make a clearer link between budgeting, accounting and reporting in the House.
	First, however, may I respond to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry)? Like the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), she mentioned the PAC's Washington visit, which clearly had a significant impact on the Committee. In discussing the Committee's 36th report, she rightly said that the simplification unit and other programmes that had been put in place were a direct result of the PAC inquiry and report. That underlines the point made by the Chairman that 94 per cent. of the Committee's recommendations have been accepted by Government. The hon. Member for South Norfolk dwelt at length on NHS information systems and development. The subject was not a formal part of our debate, as Mr. Speaker reminded him, but I am sure that the PAC will return to it again and again. I am sure, too, that we will have a chance to debate it properly.
	Like the hon. Member for Gainsborough, the hon. Member for South Norfolk spoke strongly about the problem with the Home Office accounts. The Treasury shares those serious concerns. To put it bluntly, the Home Office failed to achieve the professional standards expected of itthe introduction of new accounting software is a routine challenge that Departments should be able to meet. With the support and active involvement of the NAO and the Treasury, the Home Office is working to remedy those shortcomings and to deal with weaknesses under the guidance of its audit committee and accounting officer, who are striving to do as thorough a job as possible, given the limited quality of the available data and the position at the beginning of the year. As for wider financial skills across Government, more than 70 per cent. of Departments, including the Home Office, now have professionally qualified finance directors. A further improvement is evident in their capacity to lay their resource accounts before Parliament before the recess. Some 86 per cent. of departmental accounts are expected to be laid before the summer recess, compared with 51 per cent. last year.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) spoke about the 17th report of the Committeean extremely important report that draws on the experience of the Public Accounts Committee over recent years and which, like my hon. Friend's contribution, draws on good examples as well as bad in public service and project delivery. She cited the benefit modernisation programme, where order books were replaced by 2.5 million direct payments into bank accounts on time and on budget. My hon. Friend might have cited some of the other subjects that have been covered by PAC hearings of a similar naturefor example, NHS emergency care. Thirty-nine out of 40 of those using accident and emergency departments are now seen within four hours, even though since 1997 the numbers attending A and E are up by 39 per cent.
	As the hon. Member for Gainsborough reminded us, the importance of public services is ultimately in the impact that they have on users. The PAC held a hearing on cancer mortality and confirmed that between 1996 and 2003 it went down 14 per cent. for those over 75. In relation to the Treasury's more direct responsibilities, the online filing of self-assessment returns in 2006 meant that nearly 2 million taxpayers filed online. The system coped with enormous peak demandsmore than 150 returns a minute at one pointa very significant and successful implementation of a major programme.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland also spoke about the importance of efficiency and the interim report on the comprehensive spending review that my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary published last week. Although it was published only last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland has obviously taken a preliminary look at some of the ways that we can deliver savings of at least 2.5 per cent. a year in the CSR 2007 period. I know that my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is working with the Public Accounts Committee to try and establish ways in which the Committee can be as closely involved as possible in the efficiency programme, so that members of the Committee can be confident that they understand the efficiency gains being made without encouraging Departments to concentrate on getting good public reports, rather than achieving the efficiencies required.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) stressed that the PAC's reports and its work are not all about bad practice, and that they contain some examples of excellent practice, as he put it. He is not a member of the Committee. I think he is the only Member contributing tonight who is not a member of the Public Accounts Committee, apart from the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), who speaks from the Conservative Front Bench. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome demonstrated the breadth of his interests by dealing with concerns in the Home Office, the Environment Agency, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, and even his Somerset villages, which are, rather surprisingly, well served by the Environment Agency Wales for flood protection measures.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) picked an interesting report as the focus of his speechthe 22nd report, which looked at maintaining and improving Britain's railway stations. That inquiry by the PAC highlighted the poor state of many stations, particularly in respect of access for disabled people and security. In responding to the report, the Government made it clear that Network Rail is fully funded to maintain the fabric of its stations, and train operators should have priced station upkeep into their bids.
	My hon. Friend's remarks demonstrated how the National Audit Office can shine a forensic light on an overlooked part of public service and public spending and study that. The PAC can then hold its inquiry and report. It is part of building up parliamentary and public pressure to bring about reform, change and improvement. I pay tribute to the way my hon. Friend is clearly following up the PAC's work on the subject and will not let the issue go.

Richard Bacon: I am grateful to the Financial Secretary, who is being very generous. With reference to the contribution of the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan), I had a chance to go to the Table Office and look at early-day motion 911, which I commend to all hon. Members. I have just signed it.

John Healey: I am glad to hear that the hon. Gentleman is continuing the bipartisan tradition of the PAC.
	When my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting dealt with the 37th report, he gave the other side of the tax credit story from the one given by the hon. Members for Somerton and Frome, for Chipping Barnet and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). My hon. Friend was right to say that end-of-year adjustments are inevitable in a system that is designed to be flexible in responding to the changing circumstances of families. The policy and operational changes that my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General has announced are designed to ease some of the problems inherent in that approach.
	The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells discussed tax credits, the report on the Office of Fair Trading and audit access to the BBC, as did the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet. NAO access to the BBC was considered as part of the charter review. Current arrangements involve the BBC's audit committee holding discussions with the Comptroller and Auditor General, with the aim of framing a programme of reviews that the NAO can carry out. That is an important step forward. I should point out that the BBC is not part of governmentan important principle and fact to rememberand that it is not, as the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet argued, directly comparable with a Government Department. The importance of its independence is part of the reason why the current arrangements are the right next step to be taken.

Greg Clark: In that case, how does the Financial Secretary account for the fact that the NAO has access to the World Service, to which questions of independence apply in just the same way?

John Healey: As an independent corporation, the BBC is determiningnow in close in consultation, and then with the NAO carrying out much of this audit workthe appropriate audit programme for its activities. That seems to me the right way to proceed.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) brought an element of entertainment, as well as enlightenment, late on in our proceedings, but he also brought to bear his long experience on the Committee and made two particularly serious points. First, he pointed out that the PAC is perhaps the one body that can be consistently and forensically critical of the Executive's operation without being partisan. It is therefore not only fulfilling a very special role in the scrutiny of government in England and Wales, but clearly playing an important part during the period of the Northern Ireland Assembly's suspension.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West also argued, importantly, for the assessment of social class being a more regular feature of the way that the NAO studies the pattern of provision of, and the impact of, public services. He is right to stress that, because it is an important element in securing the equity in public service delivery that the hon. Member for Gainsborough identified as one of his six key ingredients in the report published today.
	Although there have been no specific PAC hearings this year on the private finance initiative, the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet talked about the Norfolk and Norwich PFI hospital. I remind her that that PFI project opened early and on budget; the problems that the NAO and the PAC examined were to do with the refinancing of that deal. Lessons have therefore subsequently been learned, and all refinancing gains from September 2002 are now shared 50:50 between the public and private sectors. The Treasury has set up a taskforce to assist with refinancing deals in the public sector, as they become a more relevant feature of the conduct of PFI contracts.
	In the short time left, I want to touch on three points that the hon. Member for Gainsborough stressed: the comprehensive spending review, this House's scrutiny of public expenditure, and the report that his Committee published this morning. The CSR 2007 provides us with an opportunity for a fundamental review of the balance and pattern of public expenditure. We will take account of what investments and reforms have been delivered to date. We will identify what more needs to be done to meet the challenges and the opportunities that are ahead in the next decade and beyond.
	The interim report that was published by the Treasury last Thursday is an important part of that process. However, in all the assessments that we make as part of the comprehensive review process we will use the lessons that can be learned from the work of the PAC. The seriousness and the rigour with which we are determined to approach the comprehensive spending review is demonstrated by the early settlements that were made and announced in the Budget, where for the Department for Work and Pensions, the Cabinet Office, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the Treasury the expenditure limits will fall by 5 per cent. a year in cash terms over the CSR period. The reason for doing this is that it will release almost 2 billion that we can redeploy to our priorities and to front-line services.
	I move on to the parliamentary scrutiny of expenditure while I am on the theme of departmental expenditure. I am interested to note that this month the PAC is inviting the Chairman of the Liaison Committee to encourage the departmental Select Committees to devote more time to the scrutiny of expenditure plans. That is an important role for the PAC. The rights and privileges of the elected House of Commons to scrutinise public expenditure are a fundamental part of our democracy and an essential part of our parliamentary system. I welcome, therefore, the PAC's paper, which was published earlier this month. I welcome also the report that was published recently by the Hansard Society called The Fiscal Maze. It, too, looks at the challenge of how Parliament can scrutinise more effectively the expenditure of the Executive. It is clear from the arguments set out in the Hansard Society's reportit is also the view of the PACthat we need to introduce a more systematic and challenging parliamentary scrutiny of spending plans. I believe that we need to be able to link more directly the process and scrutiny of estimates, budgets and accounts. In large part, that is a challenge for Parliament. However, the Treasury stands ready to work with Parliament on establishing workable arrangements for improving parliamentary scrutiny of planned spending.
	Today, there was published the 63rd report this Session of the PAC, which I welcome. It builds on the 17th report, which was the major focus of our debate in January. It provides a good framework that Departments and public bodies could use when designing and delivering high-quality public services. The 10 steps that it sets out to achieve successful and high quality services probably provide a sound basis for the development of better public services. The six key ingredients that the hon. Member for Gainsborough identified and stressed are also a useful perspective. I am confident that the Government will be able to respond positively to the report within a couple of months.
	The PAC, with the National Audit Office, brings an intense inquiry and analysis to the shortcomings of Government. I am reminded of the words of Edward Phelps, who in the 19th century was the Second Comptroller of the US Treasury. I am prompted by the comments of several Members in the debate to say that it is the examples of good as well as of bad that need to be considered. If we concentrate on the bad, there are risks. Edward Phelps said:
	The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
	The most important thing to do when things go wrong is to learn from the event. Undoubtedly, the work of the PAC helps us to do just that. As Cicero said,
	Any man may make a mistake but none but a fool will continue in it.
	I commend the work of the PAC. I commend the 63 reports produced by the PAC this Session. The Committee carries out important work on behalf of the House and also on behalf of the taxpayer and public service users.

Edward Leigh: With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall briefly sum up and, in particular, thank the Financial Secretary, who has just given a model summing up for a debate. He made an effort to go through every speech and ended with an important point about increasing financial scrutiny by the House of the whole budget process. When I started this process, I think that there was some scepticism about whether other Select Committees would be sufficiently interested in these issues, because in recent years they have tended to concentrate on policy. Following what the Financial Secretary said today, we have had an extremely important pointer now that the Treasury in a sense is giving a green light to the process upon which the Liaison Committee is embarking. Our meeting in October or November will be very important. I am particularly grateful for what the Financial Secretary said.
	I apologise for the fact that I cannot at this late hour indulge in Ciceronian poetry and proseI wish that I could. All I can do is briefly thank those hon. Members who have taken part. However, I should say to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) that he made an important point. We are talking about the scrutiny of 500 billion-worth of expenditure. The main part of parliamentary scrutiny lies in this Committee, and it is unfortunate that this debate has lost some of its zest in recent years and is dominated only by members of the Committee. I wish that we could find some way of getting other hon. Members to take more of an interest in these debates, but I say to the business managers that we will certainly not do that if we are still debating these issues at a quarter to midnight. We must pursue this, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said.
	The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) made a fundamental point, and the Financial Secretary made this point too, when he said that this is the one Committee that can be a critical friend of Government without being partisan. We take enormous care to try to ensure that our reports are balanced, that we encourage risk takingthe Financial Secretary quoted Edward Phelps on risk takingand enormous care is taken with the press releases. The trouble is that whether it is the Today programme or newspapers, the media are not generally interested in good news. I apologise for that, but as politicians we recognise that that is the nature of our business, so we try to be a critical friend.
	I thank also the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry); my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), who reminded us that to err is human, but for a really monumental cock-up, hire a new computer system; the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who dealt so effectively with the need for efficiency gains; the hon. Member for Tooting, to whom I have already referred; my comrade friend the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson); and my hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who brings a superbly gifted forensic mind to our debates.
	We have had a good debate and we look forward to our next six months of work.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House takes note of the 4th, the 7th to the 9th, the 12th to the 34th and the 36th to the 42nd Reports, and the Second Special Report from the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2005-06, and of the Treasury Minutes and the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel Memoranda on these Reports, Cm 6699, 6728, 6743, 6766, 6775, 6789, 6843, 6863 and 6884.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I propose to put together the Questions on the two motions on terms and conditions of employment.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Terms and Conditions of Employment

That the draft Adoption and Children Act 2002 (Consequential Amendment to Statutory Adoption Pay) Order 2006, which was laid before this House on 27th June, be approved.
	That the draft Maternity and Parental Leave etc. and the Paternity and Adoption Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2006, which were laid before this House on 27th( )June, be approved. [Huw Irranca-Davies.]

REGULATORY REFORM

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 18(1)(a) (Consideration of Draft Regulatory Reform Orders),
	That the draft Regulatory Reform (Registered Designs) Order 2006, which was laid before this House on 19th June, be approved. [Huw Irranca-Davies.]

PETITIONS

Sustainable Development

David Lidington: I beg to present a petition signed by my constituents and also by many constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow). The preamble reads:
	The petition of the citizens of Buckinghamshire and others, Declares that for any community to be sustainable, the plans for its expansion must be supported by adequate improvements to the local infrastructure and environment, including improvements to the public transport, the road and rail network and health and education services.
	The petition has been signed by elected representatives from all political parties in my area, by members of Buckinghamshire county council, Aylesbury Vale district council, Aylesbury town council, parish councillors from Wendover, Stoke Mandeville, Watermead, Waddesdon, Oving, Aston Clinton, Whitchurch and Weston Turville, as well as by citizens from those places and from Haddenham, Stone, Bierton and Weedon.
	Their common concern is that the Government, who are imposing upon those communities ambitious plans for large-scale housing expansion, should accept their responsibility to plan for and finance the public services and the infrastructure needed to make those developments truly sustainable.
	 To lie upon the Table.

Post Offices

Philip Dunne: I rise to present a petition to the House which has been signed by 4,272 constituents, including a number from across the river in the constituency of the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams). The petition reflects my constituents' concern about the threats to their post offices posed by the intended cancellation of the Post Office card account.
	The petition states:
	The petition of users of the following post offices:
	All Stretton, Alveley, Aston on Clun, Aston Munslow, Beguildy, Bent Lont, Bishop's Castle, Bridgnorth, Bromfield, Bucknell, Chirbury, Church Stretton, Claverley, Clee Hill, Cleobury Mortimer, Cleobury North, Clun, Craven Arms, Ditton Priors, East Hamlet Ludlow, Garden Village Highley, Highley, Knowbury, Ludlow, Lydbury North, Much Wenlock, Newcastle, Norton, Oreton, Sydney Cottage Drive Bridgnorth, the Hobbins, Wentnor, Worfield and Worthen
	Declare that the petitioners are concerned by the threat posed to their local post office from withdrawal of the Post Office Card Account in 2010.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons make the Department of Work and Pensions aware of the petitioners' concerns and urge the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to reconsider the withdrawal of Post Office Card Accounts.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

POLICE FORCE AMALGAMATIONS (WALES)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Huw Irranca-Davies.]

Elfyn Llwyd: We have been told that the two main drivers for the proposed reorganisation of police forces were the inability of smaller forces to deal with, first, terrorism and secondly, organised crime, but I venture to suggest that neither argument is sustainable.
	I base my view on the fact that there are several avenues of good co-operation between Welsh forces and those over the border in West Mercia, Avon and Somerset, West Midlands, Cheshire and so on. We have been told that the size of those forces means that they cannot deal with the worst organised crime. I pray in aid the recent operation between South Wales police, Gwent police and the Avon and Somerset constabulary, which netted some of the most dangerous criminals in the UK, who were hell bent on bringing crack cocaine into south Wales, having already flooded the market in the Bristol area. They were heavily armed and very dangerous people. In large part, they are behind bars, which is directly because of the excellent understanding between the Avon and Somerset constabulary, Gwent police and South Wales police.
	We are meant to rely on the Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary report, Closing the Gap. Many people have criticised that report, and I shall quote its author, Denis O'Connor:
	Being bigger is not enough to guarantee strong protective services. The environment (situation) also matters. For example, the presence of cities, ports or events (ie. repeated exposure to risks and challenges) also enhance the repertoire of protective services that forces offer the public. Able leadership can also be influential in allowing smaller forces to punch above their weight on these issues.
	He goes on,
	there are outliers: some smaller forces were almost as successful as the majority of larger forces, whilst two relatively larger forces...received surprisingly low scores.
	In December 2005, Anthony Lawrance, professor of statistics at the university of Warwick, was commissioned by West Mercia police authority to scrutinise the report. He said that the HMIC report based its amalgamation recommendation on the crucial statistical finding that in level 2 crime policing, bigger equals better. He questions the reliability of the scoring method used for each force, the statistical soundness of the claimed connection between size and effectiveness, and HMIC's misleading presentation of its data. He goes on to say that the conclusions are not sound and that the graphs were not properly drawn and were hardly representative of anything. He says that one graph was uninformative and meaningless
	an almost perfect example of how not to present a graphno scales on either axis, no data plotted to justify the lines drawn. It is almost impossible to obtain any critical understanding from it.
	That is a pretty damning critique of the report.
	I pay tribute to the Minister, who is new in the job and comes to this with an open mind, which is to the good. There is excellent day-to-day co-operation between the south Wales forces and over the border. Dyfed Powys and West Mercia liaise frequently. From my experience of dealing with legal matters, I have seen daily liaison between the North Wales police, Cheshire and Merseyside.

Mark Tami: I, too, have major concerns about an all-Wales force. Equally, however, does the hon. Gentleman accept that we should not lose sight of the fact that there must be considerable savings to be made? Four separate forces means four separate IT systems, four separate personnel systems and so on. That is surely madness, and a lot of the money saved could be returned to front-line services.

Elfyn Llwyd: That is probably right, but the figures that we have received from the Home Office suggest start-up costs of anything between 35 million and 50 million, and given the deficits projected, for example, by North Wales police it would take a devil of a long time to recover any savings.
	There is concern about the way in which the consultation was rushed through. That is not this Minister's responsibility, and I do not allege that it is. Many of the crucial questions, including those of financing, have never been properly answered. There may now be a partial reprieve, perhaps because of the Cleveland case in the High Court or because the Minister has taken stock of the situation. I am sure that he recognises that there are substantial debates to be had on this subject.
	Only a few months ago, HMIC gave all four Welsh forces a glowing report. They have improved in many ways, and they were good previously. During the past 15 years, Dyfed Powys and North Wales in particular have consistently been in the upper quartile for semi-rural forces in England and Wales.
	North Wales police have undertaken a consultation and received 90 letters from community councils in north Wales. They made different points but all were against any forced amalgamation. There has been an overwhelming response in the North Wales police area and in every other areaGwent, South Wales and Dyfed Powys. I venture to suggest that those are important submissions that need to be taken on board.
	Earlier this month, a submission was made by the clerk to the North Wales police authority. One of the points that he made was that the travelling distance between Holyhead and Cardiff is slightly longer than that between central London and Preston. That gives some idea of the likely problems that might occur. He also refers to the council tax equalisation problem and the likely capping criterion of 5 per cent., which would undoubtedly result in a black hole. He refers to future funding, the annual deficit of 29.9 million rising to just over 50 million in 2012 and the funding formula. The other week, an amendment was passed in another place that made agreement a precondition of amalgamation and provided that it should not be forced through.
	I am sure that the Minister will deal with some of those points when he responds. However, I do not believe that any rigorous analysis has been carried out, especially of financing, which must be a crucial factor in policing nowadays. When senior police officers, police authorities and many people who know about policing in Wales speak with one voice, it is time to listen. I am sure that the Minister will take that on board.
	I hope that the dialogue that takes place in the coming months will not be one-sidedI appreciate that that may be a misnomer. However, there is genuine concern that there should be proper dialogue about the matter. Nigel Thomas, the treasurer of North Wales police, has referred to the recurring deficit of 51 million. I understand that the Home Office had earmarked 120 million towards the merger plans, but that leaves a shortfall of hundreds of millions of pounds in creating the regime that the Home Office tried to impose. The North Wales share of that would go a long way towards achieving the necessary improvements in protective services.
	Everybody realises that policing changes as time passes because crime changes. Crime is becoming far more difficult to detect, criminals are becoming more adept at IT and so on. That is beyond argument. However, the arguments for an all-Wales police force have not been persuasive from the beginning.

Hywel Williams: Is it not strange that the motivation for reorganisation that the Government present is to do with operational mattersa response perhaps to triple murders in Holyhead or terrorist outragesbut that the arguments of the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) were essentially financial? They have some force, but they are not the arguments that the Government present.

Elfyn Llwyd: Yes. The other disappointing point is that the National Assembly for Wales was not brought into the debate, although it contributes 144 million per annum to the Welsh policing budget.
	Last week, on the day that the Minister announced the Government's latest position in Millbank tower, I raised a point of order to suggest that it might be better to make that statement in the House. That is the reason for the debate. The Home Secretary responded by saying that there was no policy change but that police authorities would no longer be forced to merge. If only two of the 41 current police authorities have volunteered to amalgamate, how is it possible to proceed with wholesale amalgamation in the face of such relentless opposition? The announcement amounts to a policy change.
	I ask the Minister to tackle one or two points in his response. Doubtless he will confirm whether forced amalgamations have been ditched. If the planned mergers have not been shelved, where are we on the destination to which the Home Secretary refers so often? We deserve to know.
	A huge amount of time, energy and cost has been expended in Wales on trying to make sense of the merger. It was made far more expensive by the fact that all the authorities remained largely in the dark about cost, council tax precepts, set-up costs, revenue and continuing costs. Those fundamental matters had to be guessed. That is no way to run a modern police force.
	I welcome the statement that there will be no forced mergers, if indeed that was the purport of the statement. Forced mergers could end up being the worst possible optiona shotgun marriage, to use an old and rather outmoded term. If the Minister cannot confirm that forced mergers are a dead duck, can he confirm that the Home Office will have a completely open mind on the issues of federation? I would not like this matter to arise again in 12 months' time. The four authorities are working hard to produce a plan for federation, and it must not be dismissed out of hand.
	Will the Minister deal with those points in his response? First, can he confirm that forced amalgamations are no longer the destination referred to by the Home Secretary? Secondly, if there is to be further change on a voluntary basis, will the Home Office keep an open mind on the question of plans for federation? Those are the points that I wanted to raise this evening, and I am sure that the Minister will deal with them.

Tony McNulty: I congratulate the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) on securing this debate. I shall deal with each of the points that he has raised in his usual eloquent fashion, but I have to tell him that he is a bit behind the times, given the journey that we have travelled over the past couple of weeks. I shall return to that point later.
	When my private office received the joyous news last Thursday that the hon. Gentleman had secured this debate, I was not in Westminster. I was in Cardiff, meeting the chairs of the four Welsh police authorities, members of the Social Justice and Regeneration Committee of the Welsh Assembly and members of the Welsh Local Government Association, precisely to talk about the future of policing in Wales, given that restructuring was not on the agenda. Sadly, following on from those meetings, the only matter of substance that Plaid Cymru could come up with involved a member of its committee suggesting that there had been chaos because the meeting with the committee had been on, then off, then on, then off again. That member made a rather petty and petulant point that was neither here nor there in relation to the serious issue of policing in Wales.
	Before that, I had met the chief constables of the four Welsh police forces and the Minister for Social Justice and Regeneration in the Welsh Assembly to talk about these matters. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that a debate on this matter was initiated recently by the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb). I also gave oral evidence on this matter for the best part of an hour to the Welsh Affairs Committee. I have also liaised closely with the Secretary of State for Wales and the Under-Secretary of State for Wales on the issue. Welsh interests have therefore been uppermost in my mind in recent weeks. I have also met the Welsh group of Labour MPs and had a range of meetingsindividual and otherwisewith Labour MPs from north Wales. I have been in my present post for only six weeks, but I have not had any requests for a meeting with members of Plaid Cymru.

Elfyn Llwyd: The Minister seems to be finding opportunities to make political points, despite the fact that I went out of my way to say that the way in which he was dealing with this matter was not unreasonable. I am just asking for clarity. I spoke earlier to right hon. and hon. Members of his own party, who, like me, are in the dark as to what is going on. I am simply asking for clarification.

Tony McNulty: That is what I am seeking to give the House, but it was important for me to put the context on record. I had very fruitful meetings with each of those bodies last week, and I shall tell the House precisely what I said to them in a moment.
	I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman's opening statementin which he prayed in aid a statisticianthat the essence of Closing the Gap in regard to the difficulties that we face, principally outside London throughout England and Wales, in terms of level 2 services, counter-terrorism provision and serious and organised crime, is somehow traduced by a statistician trying to demolish the substance of O'Connor's report. Almost to a man and a woman, those with whom I have engaged on this matter, regardless of their position on mergers, accept as the starting premise that there are serious gaps at level 2, in counter-terrorism provision, which must be filled.
	I turn briefly to the hon. Gentleman's point about my speech to the Local Government Association at Millbank. It was not a change in policy. It could not have been a change in policy given that some two weeks beforehand my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had made it very clear to the House that we were not going to lay the orders for enforced mergers as outlined in the timetable, which, as the hon. Gentleman will know, had Wales in the first tier. My right hon. Friend said on 19 June:
	I have already made it plain that there is no need for anyone to panic over time, because I will not lay orders on enforced change.[ Official Report, 19 June 2006; Vol. 447, c. 1059.]
	That was our position then, and it remains so. Enforced mergers are not on the cards, and we will not, as my right hon. Friend indicated, be laying those orders. Indeed, as a natural consequence of that announcement during Home Office questions, the notices of intention to lay orders to merge that were issued to the four Welsh police authorities and forces on 3 March were withdrawn on 13 July. That is a legal technicality, but those orders, on that timetable, are no longer on the agenda.
	That has nothing to do with Cleveland and nothing to do with any amendment passed in the House of Lords. It is simply a sign of a reflective, listening Government who have taken into account objections. Any number of forces, in England as well as in Wales, have said, Yes, we agree with the starting premise on level 2 protective services, but we think that there are other ways to achieve those ends. In response, we have afforded police authorities and forces the time to establish whether they can achieve those ends.
	I accept the hon. Gentleman's pointI said this in Cardiffthat apart from level 2 protective services, this is not about there being anything wrong in substance with any of the four Welsh forces. As he said, they have made huge advances over the last 10 or 15 years. None the less, a gap remains. We were trying to seek, in the Police and Justice Bill, any number of accommodations for the peculiarities of the Welsh situationthat is now history, albeit recentnot least because of pressure from my Welsh colleagues. We tried to reflect concerns of geography by having an additional deputy chief constable in Wales should the merger proceed. We tried to reflect geographic disparity by providing scope for area committees.
	I want to make two points about our starting premise now. First, for the sake of absolute clarity and accuracy about statute, forced mergers remain on the books. I will be urging the House, in October or November, to overturn the Lords amendment to which the hon. Gentleman referred which effectively says there will be no enforced mergers by the Home Secretary and that mergers must now start from an agreed position.
	The situation is not terribly confusing, I hope. On 19 June, the Home Secretary said that we would withdraw enforced mergers, and we subsequently took the orders off the table. We are not proceeding with that timetable. For the foreseeable future there will be no enforced mergers. What I cannot do, which is why I shall be asking the House to resist the Lords amendment, is say that in all circumstances, in all our subsequent open discussions, to which I shall try to return if I have the time, every single force in the country will give me and the Home Secretary a 100 per cent. guarantee that they can fill the gaps in protective services and counter-terrorism by every other route except merger. There may be some forces that still have to merge. They may not choose to do so, but it may still be overwhelmingly in the interest of public safety that they merge. A year or 18 months or so down the line, if we come to that conclusion for any two, three or four forces, the Home Secretary will need to have the route of enforced mergers open to him. That is still on the books, and as I hope the House will agree, we will not accept the notion that there can no longer be enforced mergers by the Home Secretary.
	In the current context, as I said clearly in Cardiff last week and have said previously, the starting premise must be that police forces and authorities in Wales are the very people who understand the challenges of policing in Wales and are best placed to set out how we can best improve protective services. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there has been significant co-operation between the four forces. That is not a moot or tangential point. My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) had a point in suggesting that there is scope for the four forces to share services, including many of the back-room ones. Members of the Welsh Affairs Committee made many points in that regard. I want to engage with colleagues in Wales as openly as possible to explore all those options.
	In the first instance, it must be right that, having listened to the dissenting voices and those who did not want to merge voluntarily, we sit down and work out how to take this proposal forward, recognising the gaps. I promise to come to the discussion with the open mind that the hon. Gentleman suggests, but I would still prefer an all-Wales solution. I do not resile from the suggestion in the O'Connor report that a merged force is possibly the best option. Plenty of other people, however, have far more experience and expertise than me in police matters in Wales, and we are giving them the time and scope to present their case.
	To be momentarily pedanticI am not usually pedanticthe hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong to suggest that only two forces sought to merge voluntarily. Only two forces sought to merge with each other voluntarily, but invariably, in every other region, at least two out of three or three out of four forces wanted to merge voluntarily, but a third or fourth force did not. In the north-east, for instance, Cleveland sought not to do so, but Durham and Northumbria were perfectly happy to merge. It is a pedantic point, but I felt that I should make it none the less.
	I also want to get to the stage in discussions with Welsh colleagues where we can restoreI think that that is the right wordthe issue about filling the gap at level 2, counter-terrorism and serious organised crime, in relation to our overall collective vision for policing in Wales and everywhere else. We got slightly lost in an overtly structural debate on process that was devoid of discussion of how filling the gap at level 2 relates to all the points about area committees, governance, finance and council tax equalisation that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, as well as to the relationship between the region, areas, basic command units and neighbourhood policing.
	In considering strategic forces in great detail and the preferred solution of mergers, part of the thrust was precisely to protect neighbourhood policing teams from abstraction every time that there was a serious event, incident or investigation. I still think that that is a model that works. I said to colleagues in Cardiff last week, and I say to the hon. Gentleman, that no element of the discussions with the four forces about shared services, collaboration, federation, back-office rationalisation or merger should preclude the fruitful cross-border co-operation with Cheshire and Merseyside, West Mercia and Avon and Somerset, which can be built on.
	If we are considering lead force models, with one of the four forces leading on terrorism, one on serious and organised crime and so ona sort of evolving Association of Chief Police Officers model for everything short of mergereven that is better discussed in the context of an all-Wales solution. That does not preclude cross-border co-operation at all. With regard to the events mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, I congratulate forces such as Dyfed Powys and others on their co-operation. However, much can still be done, short of merger, with regard to the four forces.
	As the hon. Gentleman's colleagues may have told him, a tortuous analogy was going round in my head when I was down in Cardiff. In the morning, I got off at Newport and looked at some neighbourhood policing there. I thought, Imagine a train journey from London. Everyone has told me that I need not go to Cardiff to enjoy all the richness of Wales: I can get off at Newport. If Newport represents what we have been discussingco-operation, collaboration and all those other modelsand all the gaps in level 2 policing are filled in the way that I require, I am quite happy not to stay on the train to Cardiff, which, in my tortuous analogy, represents the full merger model.
	That did not work terribly well during my meetings either, so I stopped eventually, but I think the hon. Gentleman gets the point.
	I now want, across all parties and agenciesincluding the Welsh Assembly Government, of course, but this remains a non-devolved matterserious, fruitful, productive discussion on the way forward for policing in Wales. I believe that last Thursday started that process. I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, as I have already met Labour colleagues and others. I think there can be a way forward. I await with interest the plans and solutions suggestedeverything short of mergerto deal with these important issues over the coming months, and I hope that we end up at Newport rather than Cardiff.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes past Twelve midnight.